The third of the Melrose novels. Some Hope finds Patrick qualified as a barrister and speaking for the first time about the damage in his past, searching for redemption amidst a crowd of glittering social dragonflies whose vapidity is the subject of his most stinging and memorable barbs. It ends at a party in Gloucestershire with one of the most dazzling comic set pieces of the twentieth century.
The third of the Melrose novels. Some Hope finds Patrick qualified as a barrister and speaking for the first time about the damage in his past, searching for redemption amidst a crowd of glittering social dragonflies whose vapidity is the subject of his most stinging and memorable barbs. It ends at a party in Gloucestershire with one of the most dazzling comic set pieces of the twentieth century.
THE THIRD PATRICK MELROSE NOVEL
Edward St Aubyn was born in London in 1960. His superbly acclaimed Melrose novels are Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope (previously published collectively as the Some Hope trilogy), Mother's Milk (shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2006) and At Last. He is also the author of the novels A Clue to the Exit and On the Edge.
‘Humor, pathos, razor-sharp judgement, pain, joy and everything in
between. The Melrose novels are a masterwork for the twenty-first
century, by one of our greatest prose stylists’ Alice Sebold
‘A memorable tour de force’ New York Times Book Review
‘I’ve loved Edward St Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose novels. Read them
all, now’ David Nicholls
‘St Aubyn’s Melrose series slices and dices morality with prose so
chiselled and a narrative so intense that the hairs on the back of
your neck stand up’ Geordie Greig, Evening Standard
‘A masterpiece. Edward St Aubyn is a writer of immense gifts’
Patrick McGrath
'The wit of Wilde, the lightness of Wodehouse, the waspishness of
Waugh. A joy' Zadie Smith
‘Perhaps the most brilliant English novelist of his generation’
Alan Hollinghurst
‘Humor, pathos, razor-sharp judgement, pain, joy and everything in
between. The Melrose novels are a masterwork for the 21st century,
by one of our greatest prose stylists’ Alice Sebold
‘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
‘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
‘St Aubyn puts an entire family under a microscope, laying bare all
its painful, unavoidable complexities. At once epic and intimate,
appalling and comic, the novels are masterpieces, each and every
one’ Maggie O’Farrell
‘Beautifully written, excruciatingly funny and also very tragic’
Mariella Frostrup, Sky Magazine
‘His prose has an easy charm that masks a ferocious, searching
intellect. As a sketcher of character, his wit — whether turned
against pointless members of the aristocracy or hopeless crack
dealers — is ticklingly wicked. As an analyser of broken minds and
tired hearts he is as energetic, careful and creative as the
perfect shrink. And when it comes to spinning a good yarn, whether
over the grand scale or within a single page of anecdote, he has a
natural talent for keeping you on the edge of your seat’ Melissa
Katsoulis, The Times
‘The Patrick Melrose novels can be read as the navigational charts
of a mariner desperate not to end up in the wretched harbor from
which he embarked on a voyage that has led in and out of heroin
addiction, alcoholism, marital infidelity and a range of behaviors
for which the term ‘self-destructive’ is the mildest of euphemisms.
Some of the most perceptive, elegantly written and hilarious novels
of our era. . . Remarkable’ Francine Prose, New York Times
‘Irony courses through these pages like adrenaline . . . Patrick’s
intelligence processes his predicaments into elegant, lucid,
dispassionate, near-aphoristic formulations . . . Brimming with
witty flair, sardonic perceptiveness and literary finesse’ Peter
Kemp, Sunday Times
‘A humane meditation on lives blighted by the sins of the previous
generation. St Aubyn remains among the cream of British novelists’
Sunday Times
‘The main joy of a St Aubyn novel is the exquisite clarity of his
prose, the almost uncanny sense he gives that, in language as in
mathematical formulae, precision and beauty invariably point to
truth . . . Characters in St Aubyn novels are hyper-articulate, and
the witty dialogue is here, as ever, one of the chief joys’ Suzi
Feay, Financial Times
‘The darkest possible comedy about the cruelty of the old to the
young, vicious and excruciatingly honest. It opened my eyes to a
whole realm of experience I have never seen written about. That’s
the mark of a masterpiece’ The Times
'One of the most amazing reading experiences I've had in a decade.'
Michael Chabon, LA Times
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