Reader’s Diary: Edward St. Aubyn’s ‘The Patrick Melrose Novels’ (Continued)
When I left off last week I was halfway through this quartet of low-life-in-the-midst-of-high-life novels, dissatisfied with the series’ prelude, Never Mind, but encouraged by the relative superiority of book two, Bad News.
When I left off last week I was halfway through this quartet of low-life-in-the-midst-of-high-life novels, dissatisfied with the series’ prelude, Never Mind, but encouraged by the relative superiority of book two, Bad News (both originally published in 1992). I happened to see one of the friends who’d recommended the series to me; he was surprised by my skepticism. “St. Aubyn writes such great sentences!” he said. Well, it’s true — there is some sharp writing. But not much range. And I always feel St. Aubyn is imitating Wilde (in his dialogue), Proust (in his attraction/repulsion toward “society”), or Joyce (in his rare evocations of a reality beyond the literal) — though he really only comes within striking distance of Wilde. Plus he’s got some annoying writerly tics, of which I’ll point to just one: His habit of appending an unnecessary adverb to his verbs when reporting his characters’ speech. Example: “’Yes, Nanny,’ he replied obediently.” Isn’t “Yes, Nanny,” obedient all by itself? It’s a man-bites-dog thing: It would have been worth remarking if those words had somehow been said other than obediently. Or this: “’I’m quite bien né enough for two,’ replied Nicholas grandly.” Well, I’d like to hear that said humbly! In any case, the hallucinatory pleasures of Bad News are understandably rarer in the third volume, Some Hope (1994), which finds the thirty-year-old Patrick Melrose — a junkie when we last saw him — clean and sober and struggling to understand his abusive father with some equanimity. While he’s come to see through “the naïve faith that rich people are more interesting than poor ones, or titled people more interesting than untitled ones,” the novel’s appeal lies largely in its picture of life among the rich and titled; painting them as monsters should make them more intriguing, at least in theory. But only when he makes Princess Margaret one of his monsters does St. Aubyn exceed expectations. I suspect he originally conceived of a trilogy ending with Patrick cast ashore on the rocky coast of mature insight, so when installment four, Mother’s Milk (2005), opened with a ludicrous attempt to write from the viewpoint of a preverbal infant, Patrick’s new son — St. Aubyn does not attempt to tackle the stylistic problems involved, trying instead to barrel past them as though they weren’t there (not a moocow in sight) — I decided to close the book without finishing and without regret.
Edward St. Aubyn’s The Patrick Melrose Novels (2012) is published by Picador and is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.
