The Patrick Melrose Series

This is a series of five novels, each sharply, clearly and tightly plotted round significant moments throughout Patrick Melrose's life - the violation of a child, which goes uncomforted; the intensity and texture of mind and mood of the alcoholic and drug addicted; the brittle humour and emptiness of privileged society; early parenthood; the deaths of two abusive parents. As well as astringent satire on new-age spirtualism, the pompousness of the snobby, rich and privileged, each novel contains overwhelming descriptions of how people of all ages (especially babies and children) experience the world, what they notice and how they engage with each other: and how when an individual choses to take a moments to be kind, to communicate, there is a chance for life to change. The skill with which Edward St. Aubyn does this is such that for once, I found myself understanding how and why a person can choose to be actively cruel and brutal husband and father, and justify it to himself: to laugh at the cruel jokes of a vile snob; as well as to recognize my own experience as an exhausted and overwhelmed mother.