Patrick Melrose Novels (St. Aubyn)

Author Bio
• Birth—January 14, 1960
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—Oxford University
• Awards—Betty Trask Award; Prix Femina
   Etranger; South Bank Show Award;
• Currently—lives in London, England


Edward St Aubyn was born in London in 1960. He was educated at Westminster school and Keble college, Oxford University. He is the author of seven novels of which Mother’s Milk was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize, won the 2007 Prix Femina Etranger and won the 2007 South Bank Show award on literature.

His first novel, Never Mind (1992) won the Betty Trask award. This novel, along with Bad News (1992), Some Hope (1994), and Mother's Milk (2005) have been collectively published under the title The Patrick Melrose Novels. The series is semi-autobiographical.

His other fiction consists of On the Edge (1998), which was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize, and A Clue to the Exit (2000).

The Patrick Melrose series
The series begins with Never Mind (1992) in Patrick’s fifth year in a mansion in the South of France. It paints a picture of his father as a monstrous member of the fading English nobility who believes in suave public school (elite English boarding school) cruelty and that a truly noble man is languid. It is revealed that Patrick was the product of rape and that at this mansion his father raped him, not for any sexual pleasure but out of mere insatiable cruelty.

In the second book, Bad News (1992), Patrick is in his early 20s, reveling in a heroin addiction, and in New York to collect his father’s ashes. The novel portrays Patrick’s searches and highs and avoidance of the significance of his father’s death and the vague pleasure he gets from it.

In Some Hope (1994), Patrick is recovering from his addiction, finally admits to a friend about his father’s actions towards him in his childhood and goes to a party which is also attended by Princess Margaret where St Aubyn gets to sketch an absurd upper class.

In Mother’s Milk (2005) Patrick has a family and children. His mother, who in his childhood victimized him through inaction, now actively victimizes him through having an insatiable need to be charitable and effectively disinheriting Patrick by giving away the family home he grew up in to a new age religion foundation. He descends to a lower class than that of his ancestors and works as a lawyer.

If Mother’s Milk is about the wonders of birth and early childhood, At Last (2012) is a meditation on death. In the final instalment of the series his midlife crisis has caused his wife to leave him and his horrible mother has died. He finally deals with and accepts his history.

In 2012 Mother's Milk was made into a feature film, opening in the UK to some excellent reviews in publications such as the Guardian, Sight & Sound and the Observer. The screenplay was written by St Aubyn and director Gerald Fox. It stars Jack Davenport, Adrian Dunbar, Diana Quick and Margaret Tyzack in her last performance. (Author bio adapted from the publisher and Wikipedia.)