Edward St. Aubyn

Everybody needs a break now and then. Sure, that's a cliché, but it almost certainly applies to Edward St. Aubyn, whose Patrick Melrose quintet was suffused with various flavors of abuse, trauma and drug use. St. Aubyn showed himself to be a prose stylist of the top rank in these books, but reading them could make you feel uncomfortable. Both their central protagonist and their prose seemed, at times, to positively vibrate with anger and resentment. Until the series's last few pages, in which Patrick reaches a kind of awkward peace with his past, there was hardly any relief to be found anywhere in the psychological desert in which he wandered. The fact that the Patrick Melrose series was said to be largely autobiographical just made the whole thing worse.

Which is why, I suppose, I'm glad that "Lost for Words" even exists. It's a novelette, really, a light satire on the publishing industry and those who work in it. It's most obvious target -- and foil -- is the Booker Prize, but we also meet wannabe literary stars, scheming politicians, mercenary editors, and an assortment of vaguely literate philistines. The prose is fine, and the plot flows well enough, but even though the Booker is one of the easiest targets the literary world has to offer, I kept wondering if St. Aubyn had missed a few easy shots. We never meet a writer from some impoverished former British colonial outpost whose works chart the never-ending decline of the once mighty Empire, for example. A book fitting that description seems to win the Booker about every other year! And the work submitted by the token Scot isn't even written in dialect, although, to be fair, "wot u lookin at", which represents the very best of modern British culture, certainly is, and thank God for that. So, in closing, I'm glad that the author was in a place where he felt psychologically comfortable enough to write this one. And it's amusing and light and well-written. But I don't think that I can really recommend it.… (more)

The final book in the Melrose saga, Patrick's mother has finally died and the timing of the book is around Eleanor's funeral. I think it is fair to say it is the weakest of the five books, and yet, given St. Aubyn's thematic drive, essential. At the core of it is the funeral ceremony which has been arranged by Mary, Patrick's somewhat estranged wife (his choice) because he had to go to New York to do what was needed to close a trust (made by his great-grandfather) that was ending, by coincidence, at exactly the moment when his mother died. She had given away all her money to the Shamanic Foundation, but now Patrick inherits a 'small' (only by comparison!) sum from her own father! One of the many many nested ironies . . . What matters though was that during the funeral, the readings and the speeches, Patrick is letting his mother go and--as I have found at funerals I have attended--learning enough to be surprised by aspects of his mother he was less aware of, never experienced that help him move his thoughts forward. It is a good conclusion, full of what I would call sensible hope for moving forward in the direction he has been seeking, loving without harming, without too much attachment or transference and all the rest of it. ***** for the series.… (more)

Patrick is clean now, somewhere in his late twenties but still hesitating over what to do with himself. This installment unfolds over a few days, a house party in the country at the home of some titled 'friend' -- he hasn't at all freed himself of this milieu and likely he won't. His efforts are all directed toward figuring out how to put his father aside, he understands, no doubt from the work freeing himself from drugs, that as long as he is reactive to his father he won't be free to be a full human being. So there is much musing over forgiveness, detachment, accepting his father as a person who had great gifts but also was entirely unstable. He also confides in his friend, Johnny Hall, about what his father did to him and once having done so, finds the confession anticlimactic -- revealing the thing that has hurt us most to someone else does relieve some pressure, but doesn't eliminate it. The process isn't going to be at all linear. There is a hilarious portrait of Princess Margaret who attends this truly ghastly party. (And I suspect many other caricatures of members of this social set.) Patrick is coming along, working hard. ****… (more)

In a way all you need to know is this: Zone Three of parenting:
"Whenever he {Patrick} tried to define Zone Three, he could only think of it as generosity that was not based on compensation or duty. Even though he could not quite describe it, he clung to this fragile intuition of what it might mean to be well." Of course Zone One is to treat your kid(s) exactly as you were treated, Zone Two is to take scrupulous care NOT to treat them as your parents treated you. Zones one and two having nothing to do with the actual child before you, both disastrous.
To recap: In Book One Patrick was a boy and we get a good look at his childhood. In Book Two his father has died and he has come to NYC to collect his ashes. Along with the farcical is the darkest and most vivid description of drug addiction I've ever encountered (not that I seek it out). In Book Three we see him in transition, at a truly typical but awful 'country house' weekend in England. He's pretty much clean though he relies heavily on antidepressants, alcohol and sleeping pills, but the important thing is that he tells his friend Johnny Hall (a truly sane and good man) what his father did to him. He must be through his law internship etc. because he is a barrister. Not married yet.

Here, in Book Four, which covers several years, it is his son Robert who opens the novel with his birth and early impressions. Then we move to the house in the south of France and through Robert revisit Patrick's childhood in some ways but not in others as Patrick is really really working hard to be a 'good' father. He is mired in Zone Two and knows it, knows he could do better. He is starting to drink heavily. The family are in the house in Saint Nazaire and his mother is failing epically. (In every possible way.) His mother has suffered several strokes and has decided to leave this house and all her money to found a new age retreat, Patrick will get nothing. His wife has child #2 Thomas, who is a luminous child. The book travels over several years. Both children are insanely verbal at a young age, terrifying really, and his wife has become utterly besotted with Thomas to such a degree that the other two men of the family, himself and Robert take the back seat, or are, literally put in a different motel room in one instance. By the end the house is gone and his mother has demanded to return to England to a care home there. She has given away everything but still expects Patrick to take care of her. She has never taken care of him being the point. She can barely do anything and has decided she wants to die. Patrick is drinking heavily, no longer having the house to go to in Southern France they go on a disastrous trip to America. (One irony here is that they only know terribly rich people in America, all related to his mother or else they are somewhat haplessly wandering about, stopping at horrible motels or restaurants, with no idea how to find an America that might be worth being in.) There is some meditating on what money does to the very rich as Patrick struggles along as a parent and with his alternating pity for and fury with his mother. He knows there is more. Zone Three beckons but he cannot get there. The book ends with his mother not quite dead yet, but close and he has, finally, a sense of being finished with this part of his life. *****

One more book to go -- I find myself thinking of Knausgaard's epic, St. Aubyn sticks closer to the psychological development of a person who is truly making an effort and Knausgaard's reaches out beyond (into Hitler's insanity) but there are parallels. Or maybe better to say, similarities.… (more)