The Patrick Melrose Novels

“Nothing about the plots can prepare you for the rich, acerbic comedy of St. Aubyn’s world or—more surprising—its philosophical density.” —Zadie Smith, Harper’s Magazine“Gorgeous, golden prose … St. Aubyn is utterly fearless when faced with the task of unpacking and anatomizing the inner lives of characters. No emotion is so subtle and fleeting he can’t convey it, or so terrifying or shameful that he can’t face it.”―Lev Grossman, Time“St. Aubyn writes with exquisite control and a brilliant comic touch … One of the best fictional cycles in contemporary fiction.” ―The Boston Globe“Perhaps the most brilliant English novelist of his generation.” —Alan Hollinghurst“One of the most amazing reading experiences I’ve had in a decade.” —Michael Chabon“If something has kept you from reading this great novel in five parts, let it keep you no more.” —Jonathan Franzen“A staggeringly good prose stylist.” ―The Times (London)“A literary work whose physical scale is Tolstoyan … and as authorially introspective as Proust’s … There is a quality of daring and cultural reset in the work which is rare at any period … The Melrose novels catch, with finger-on-the-pulse sensitivity, the turbulence of the cross-century period.” —from the Introduction by John Sutherland

EDWARD ST AUBYN was born in London in 1960. His novel Mother’s Milk was awarded the Prix Femina étranger and shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He is also the author of A Clue to the Exit, On the Edge (short-listed for the Guardian Fiction Prize), Lost for Words (winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize), Double Blind, and Dunbar, his reimagining of King Lear for the Hogarth Shakespeare project.

About the Introducer: JOHN SUTHERLAND is a British author, columnist, and professor at University College London. He writes for The Guardian and has twice served as a judge for the Booker Prize.