Mother's Milk - Hardcover

St Aubyn, Edward

3.78

6,122 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1890447404 ISBN 13: 9781890447403

Publisher: Open City Books, 2005

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Writing with the scathing wit and bright perceptiveness for which he has become known, celebrated English author Edward St. Aubyn creates a complex family portrait that examines the shifting allegiances between mothers, sons, and husbands. The novel's perspective ricochets among all members of the Melrose family -- the family featured in St. Aubyn's widely praised trilogy, Some Hope -- starting with Robert, who provides an exceptionally droll and convincing account of being born; to Patrick, a hilariously churlish husband who has been sexually abandoned by his wife in favor of his sons; to Mary, who's consumed by her children and overwhelming desire not to repeat the mistakes of her own mother. All the while, St. Aubyn examines the web of false promises that entangle this once illustrious family -- whose last vestige of wealth, an old house in the south of France -- is about to be donated by Patrick's mother to a New Age foundation. An up-to-the-minute dissection of the mores of child-rearing, marriage, adultery, and assisted suicide, Mother's Milk showcases St. Aubyn's luminous and acidic prose -- and his masterful ability to combine the most excruciating emotional pain with the driest comedy.

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Review:

‘So good – so fantastically well written, profound and humane . . . it is heartstopping’ Rachel Cooke, Observer

‘The Melrose sequence is now clearly one of the major achievements of contemporary British fiction’ Evening Standard

'The Melrose novels are a masterwork for the twenty-first century' Alice Sebold

‘The bravura quality of St Aubyn’s performance is irresistible. Brilliant’ Sunday Telegraph

‘Mother’s Milk has the cerebral excitement and piercing funniness of St Aubyn at his brilliant best’ Tatler

‘St Aubyn is a staggeringly good prose stylist and evidently has a big and open heart’ The Times

‘From the very first lines I was completely hooked . . . By turns witty, moving and an intense social comedy, I wept at the end but wouldn’t dream of giving away the totally unexpected reason’ Antonia Fraser, Sunday Telegraph

‘Blackly comic, superbly written fiction . . . His style is crisp and light; his similes exhilarating in their accuracy . . . St Aubyn writes with luminous tenderness of Patrick’s love for his sons’ Caroline Moore, Sunday Telegraph

‘I’ve loved Edward St Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose novels. Read them all, now’ David Nicholls

‘Wonderful caustic wit . . . Perhaps the very sprightliness of the prose – its lapidary concision and moral certitude – represents the cure for which the characters yearn. So much good writing is in itself a form of health’ Edmund White, Guardian

From the Publisher:

Winner of the South Bank Show Literature Award

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