Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #56996 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback

Synopsis
From Provence to New York to Gloucestershire, through the savageries of a childhood with a tyrannical father and an alcoholic mother to a young adulthood fraught with drug addiction, we follow Patrick Melrose's search for redemption amidst a crowd of glittering social dragonflies whose vapidity is the subject of his most stinging and memorable barbs. A story of abuse, addiction and recovery, the trilogy is a haunting yet hilarious depiction of a journey to and from the furthest limits of the human experience. Ultimately, "Some Hope" offers what the title suggests a powerfully satisfying conclusion and the reconciliation between the quest for forgiveness and redemption, marking St. Aubyn as a truly important literary discovery, one of the most original, intelligent and acerbically witty voices of our time. "A masterpiece. Edward St. Aubyn is a writer of immense gifts. His wit, his profound intelligence, and his exquisite control of a story that rapidly descends to the lower depths before somehow painfully rising again all go to distinguish the trilogy as fiction of a truly rare and extraordinary quality" - Patrick McGrath. "Our purest living prose stylist" - "Guardian".

"This is beautifully written novel...whose harrowing but fiercely funny portrait of addiction is the best I've ever read" - "Time Out".

About the Author
Edward St. Aubyn was born in London in 1960. He is the author of the novels A Clue to the Exit and On the Edge, which was short-listed for the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1998.

Customer Reviews

Depressingly good
Don't read this book if you want to be a writer. St Aubyn is one of our greatest living authors, and yet this book is largely unknown. The stuff of genius. Neglected genius.

some praise
I thought the first book in this trilogy was astounding. Really shocking, beautifully written and engrossing. After that, things go a little, just a little, downhill. The second book is so mimetic in its depiction of a drug addict's life that it is almost unbearably difficult to read (though still, at times, entertaining) - but, in a way, it's too unrelenting, and therefore becomes a bit dull. By the third book, the writing seems to run out of steam somewhat. We don't really learn anything knew, and the characters portrayed seem much less substantial. The four stars are really for the first part of the book. The second part would get three. And the third two. However, I've been generous because this is clearly a very talented writer.

I'm Very Impressed
SOME HOPE is made up of three novellas, each featuring the experiences of Patrick Melrose during a 24-hour (±) ordeal. In each, St. Aubyn explores Patrick's relationship with David Melrose, his snobby, controlling, and repellent father.

The first novella, NEVER MIND, shows Patrick as a wee boy as he suffers loneliness, neglect, and physical abuse. The second, BAD NEWS, follows Patrick in his early twenties on a hilarious and Herculean drug binge in New York City. The third, SOME HOPE, shows Patrick near thirty and free of addictions. At a party honoring Princess Margaret, he gets a stronger grip on his monstrous father's legacy and the allure of his snobbish world.

The writing throughout these three novellas is absolutely sensational. If a good writer allows a reader to experience the life, aspirations, and psychology of his/her characters, St. Aubyn is a GREAT writer in this book. To a degree, this is due to his breathtaking metaphors and similes, which go beyond deft phrases to actually capture and define a moment or effect. Here are four that I like, two from BAD NEWS and two from SOME HOPE.

o The heroin followed in a soft rain of felt hammers playing up his spine and rumbling into his skull.
o Patrick sprung up the steps of the Key Club with unaccustomed eagerness, his nerves squirming like a bed of maggots whose protective stone has been flicked aside.

o ...a couple of years earlier, he had started to realize what it must be like to be lucid all the time, an unpunctuated stretch of consciousness, a white tunnel, hollow and dim, like a bone with the marrow sucked out.
o The two men fell silent and stared at the throng that struggled... with the same frantic but restricted motion of bacteria multiplying under microscope.

This book is highly recommended. But I quibble on one point: Cabbies traveling from Kennedy Airport don't use the Williamsburg Bridge and The Avenue of the Americas to reach the Pierre. Instead, they take the Triborough Bridge and FDR Drive. Otherwise, fantastic!