The Patrick Melrose Novels

Author(s): Edward St Aubyn

General Fiction

Acclaimed for their searing wit and their deep humanity, this magnificent cycle of novels in which Patrick Melrose battles to survive the savageries of his childhood and lead a self-determined life is one of the major achievements in English fiction. 'Perhaps the most brilliant English novelist of his generation' Alan Hollinghurst 'I've loved Edward St Aubyn's Patrick Melrose novels. Read them all, now' David Nicholls 'The wit of Wilde, the lightness of Wodehouse, the waspishness of Waugh. A joy' Zadie Smith 'At once epic and intimate, appalling and comic, the Melrose novels are masterpieces' Maggie O'Farrell

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"Like Waugh, St. Aubyn writes with exquisite control and a brilliant comic touch...Patrick often seems like a Philip Roth hero transplanted into a world of English privilege...The Patrick Melrose Series forms an exhaustive study of cruelty: its varieties, its motivations, its consequences, its moral implications...At Last is an intelligent and surprising novel, a fitting conclusion to the one of the best fictional cycles in contemporary fiction." --"The Boston Globe"

"Implausibly brilliant speech...The striking gap between, on the one hand, the elegant polish of the narration, the silver rustle of these exquisite sentences, the poised narrowness of the social satire and, on the other hand, the screaming pain of the family violence inflicted on Patrick makes these books some of the strangest of contemporary novels ...This prose, whose repressed English control is admired by everyone from Alan Hollinghurst to Will Self, is drawn inexorably back to a fearful instability, to the nakedness of infancy."-- James Wood, "The New Yorker"

"Gorgeous, golden prose...St. Aubyn is utterly fearless when faced with the task of unpacking and anatomizing the inner lives of characters. No emotion is so subtle and fleeting he can't convey it, or so terrifying or shameful that he can't face it." --Lev Grossman, "Time"

"Parental death, heroin, childhood rape, emotional frigidity, suicide, alcoholism...nothing about the plots can prepare you for the rich, acerbic comedy of St. Aubyn's world---or more surprising---its philosophical density."---Zadie Smith, "Harper's Magazine"

"Tantalizing...A memorable tour de force."---"The New York Times Book Review"

"Extraordinary...acidic humor, stiletto-sharp."---Francine Prose

"Intoxicatingly witty."---"The New York Review of Books"

"The most brilliant English novelist of his generation."---Alan Hollinghurst

"Our purest living prose stylist."---"The Guardian" (London)

"A smoldering portrait of a class largely banished from fiction

Edward St Aubyn was born in London in 1960. His superbly acclaimed Melrose novels are Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope (previously published collectively as the Some Hope trilogy), Mother's Milk (shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2006) and At Last. He is also the author of the novels A Clue to the Exit and On the Edge.

General Fields

  • : 9781447223528
  • : Pan Macmillan
  • : Picador
  • : Contains 5 Paperbacks and Other point of sale
  • : 01 April 2012
  • : United Kingdom
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Edward St Aubyn
  • : Multiple copy pack