Patrick Melrose Volume 1: Never Mind, Bad News and Some Hope

by Edward St. Aubyn

Book Overview

Some Hope marks the U.S. debut of Edward St. Aubyn, highly acclaimed in the United Kingdom as one of the most original, intelligent, and acerbically witty voices of our time. From Provence to New York... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1509897682
• ISBN13: 9781509897681
• Release Date: May 2018
• Publisher: Picador
• Length: 464 Pages
• Weight: 2.31 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.8" x 5.2" x 1.2"

Customer Reviews

don't read this unless you're highly literate

I truly don't understand the reviewers of this book who maunder on about how it was well written, but that they couldn't really get into it because the characters weren't likable. My God, have they never read "Madame Bovary"? I read a book for fascination, not necessarily to meet sweet people with darling personalities. This book is harrowing and wildly funny. It is the single best descrption of drug addiction I've ever read. The novel is beautifully structured. Yes, the main character (and others, too) are smart-mouthed and funny. I liked this well enough that I followed up and read "Mother's Milk," which was good, but not as good as this book. Read this is you are smart. Don't read it if you're looking to hang out with delicate, polite people.

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 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!

Literary Artwork

Some Hope by Edward St. Aubyn is a trilogy of novellas about the cruel and sadistic British aristocrat David Melrose. In some ways, the book is really about son Patrick Melrose who suffers at the hands of both his perverse father and his drug-addicted mother. The first novella is literally saturated with examples of the evility of David Melrose and the sufferings of his family at his hands. In the second novella, son Patrick trudges through the harrowing New York City scene mingling with all those lowly commoners called Americans. The third novella concerns Patrick's experimenting with various and sundry illegal drugs. This trilogy of novellas shows how being raised by twisted parentsleads to the children becoming equally twisted adults themselves. This is a most unusual and excellent work of literary art.

Difficult Read

Difficult read, in the best sense of the phrase. Characters drip with egotism. Prose is spare, unforgiving, and surprisingly unjaded at times. Written by a professional. Why write such a thing? Is this what teaches us to live? It teaches us what it us to live. Like looking at the question of evil from a religious perspective, only this seems purely secular. Does it have lasting value? At least a few hours, so far. I think that's enough to recommend very highly.

Aristocrats Behaving Badly

This fascinating but harrowing volume comprises three novellas about Patrick Melrose - as a young boy at his parents' French villa, as a drug-addled young man on the loose in Manhattan, and as sober guest at a British country-house party in honor of Princess Margaret. In economical and blackly humorous prose, St. Aubyn fleshes out a memorable cast of characters. The stand-out is Patrick's monstrous father, who practices snobbism, sarcasm, sadism, and worse crimes. These books are so brief that some characters remain ciphers (particularly Patrick's girlfriends). And the author's decision to abandon the protagonist's mother after the first book is a serious flaw. But the dialogue St. Aubyn puts in Princess Margaret's mouth is worth the price of admission. The situation the author sets up at the end involving the princess, the French ambassador, and a splash of venison sauce crystallizes the book's themes with great humor. On the whole, deeply rewarding if you have a strong stomach.