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"Some Hope" Trilogy:‘A masterpiece. Edward St Aubyn is a writer of immense gifts. His wit, his profound intelligence, and his exquisite control of a story that rapidly descends to the lower depths before somehow painfully rising again – all go to distinguish the trilogy as fiction of a truly rare and extraordinary quality’ - Patrick McGrath ‘Our purest living prose stylist’ - The Guardian
‘This is a beautifully written novel..whose harrowing but fiercely funny portrait of addiction is the best I’ve ever read’ - Time Out
A Clue to the Exit:Once more, St Aubyn takes us to the very limits of the expressible.' - The Spectator ‘Perhaps the most brilliant English novelist of his generation’ - Alan Hollinghurst "Some Hope" Trilogy:‘A masterpiece. Edward St Aubyn is a writer of immense gifts. His wit, his profound intelligence, and his exquisite control of a story that rapidly descends to the lower depths before somehow painfully rising again – all go to distinguish the trilogy as fiction of a truly rare and extraordinary quality’ - Patrick McGrath ‘Our purest living prose stylist’ - The Guardian
‘This is a beautifully written novel..whose harrowing but fiercely funny portrait of addiction is the best I’ve ever read’ - Time Out
A Clue to the Exit:Once more, St Aubyn takes us to the very limits of the expressible.' - The Spectator ‘Perhaps the most brilliant English novelist of his generation’ - Alan Hollinghurst On the Edge:‘An intellectually informed, richly insightful and vigorously funny take on the modern condition’ - Sunday Times ‘Pierced with goodwill, tenderness and a new kind of thoughtfulness’ - The Spectator ‘His satire is unfailingly funny and immensely satisfying’ - The Guardian Mother's Milk‘Edward St Aubyn’s novels are so intoxicatingly witty that their high seriousness may not be immediately apparent. This seriousness is not tacked on as a solemn ‘message’; it is intrinsic to his ferociously comic vision. Yet they cannot be described as social satires: there is no facile exaggeration, no smug misanthropy or studied indignation involved in the uncomfortable truths he tells.’ - Francis Wyndham, The New York Review of Books ‘A huge revelation..it’s 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.’ - Vanora Bennett, The Times ‘In a market where the dullest writers are routinely described as ‘wickedly funny’, he’s the real thing.....These books are hilarious and terrifying, shot through with pain and wisdom and written in the most extraordinary cold, pure style: rockets of wit exploding like flares to highlight the bleakness of the terrain’ - Independent on Sunday ‘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 ‘Mother’s Milk showcases St Aubyn’s luuminous and acidic prose, as well as his masterful ability to combine the most excruciating emotional pain with the driest comedy’ - Herald Express ‘A fantastically funny, humane and serious novel about the destructive influence of parents upon their children, and the possibility of escaping it.’ - Anthony Quinn, The Daily Telegraph ‘St Aubyn’s books are so precise and crystalline that not a sentence needs editing. Like a finely cut diamond, they shimmer with clarity, comedy and poignancy. At last, St Aubyn’s talent has been recognised. He didn’t win the Man Booker Prize this week but his latest book, Mother’s Milk, made it on to the shortlist and is now No.33 on Amazon’s sales list. Not before time, I say.’ - Mary Ann Sieghart, The Times ‘Mother’s Milk..is extremely sharp, wise, touching and very funny - like all his books.’ - The Guardian Click here to read a full review by Francis Wyndham in the New York Review of Books. At Last:'Funeral rites dominate At Last, the concluding work in Edward St Aubyn's semi-autobiographical sequence of ferociously funny, painfully acute and exhilaratingly written novels about his fictional alter ego, Patrick Melrose . . . As in all the novels, exploration of Patrick's inner turmoil coexists with stylishly choreographed scenes of mordantly enjoyable social comedy - here as jet black as the outfits worn by some of the curiously assorted mourners at the crematorium . . . The funeral is alive with satiric potential. And St Aubyn unleashes it to zestfully hilarious effect. 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, At Last brings a remarkable fictional enterprise - a brilliantly controlled story of a life sent out of control - to a winning culmination.' - Peter Kemp - Sunday Times 'From the very first lines I was completely hooked on At last by Edward St Aubyn. It is in fact the last of the trilogy featuring Patrick Melrose, but a complete story in itself. However, I can't think of a better summer read than taking all three books, the first two, including the Booker-nominated Mother's Milk, and ending, gloriously, with At Last. 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, Summer Reading choice, Sunday Telegraph 'St Aubyn's technique is to crystallise emotional intensity into sentences of arctic beauty, which can be caustically witty or brutal. In At Last this crystallisation and control are on glittering display. At Last is a novel of exquisite observation which conveys a movement towards peace . . . We have reached the pinnacle of a series that has plunged into darkness and risen towards light. At Last is both resounding end and hopeful beginning.' - Philip Womack, Daily Telegraph 'Mother's Milk was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Book Prize and, although it did not win as it plainly should have done, it did garner St Aubyn a mass readership for the first time. [This] week, he publishes a fifth and apparently final book in the sequence, which is now clearly one of the major achievements of contemporary British fiction; the books succeed in making their very particular material - child abuse in a stratospherically upper-class milieu - into a form of truth-telling for everybody; stingingly well written and exhilaratingly funny' - from the interview by David Sexton in the Evening Standard 'A writer who admits to having suffered extreme parental cruelty has three choices: write a misery memoir, write an autobiographical novel, or shy away from exploring the pain and get a job in a bank. Thankfully for the growing number of readers who consider Edward St Aubyn to be one of the finest writers of his generation, the author of Mother's Milk went for option B. 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 of three volumes or within a single page of anecdote, he has a natural talent for keeping you on the edge of your seat . . . Only at the end do you sense that the ground has shifted as our hero - finally freed from the father who abused him and the mother who, also abused, abandoned him - has changed his mind and decided to live for the family that he has made instead of the one that made him. At last. A happy ending? If this is indeed the final Melrose book, then happy indeed. If, as St Aubyn's fans will be hoping, Patrick comes out of retirement for one last job, well then - anything could happen. ' - Melissa Katsoulis, The Times 'The fifth book in Edward St Aubyn's semi-autobiographical series, At Last, would work well as a stand-alone novel but the reading experience will be richer for those who enjoyed his Man Booker-shortlisted Mother's Milk. However, it will be most rewarding of all for those who have read the preceding three books, Never Mind, Bad New and Some Hope; 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. On page after page, sentences invite rereading; Characters in St Aubyn novels are hyper-articulate, and the witty dialogue is here, as ever, one of the chief joys; At Last is a miraculously wrought piece of art' - Suzi Feay, Financial Times 'St Aubyn's characteristic blend of acid wit, intellect and compassion is plaited through At Last, which is focused on a single day Đ that of Eleanor's cremation, in 2005. St Aubyn's acerbic humour is wonderful but this is also a psychologically astute book . . . strikingly raw and honest, too. Patrick has recently left the Priory, so the language of psychotherapy is prominent, but there is no self-indulgence. When Patrick refers to projection ('you spot what you've got and you've got what you spot') or repression ('a different kind of burial, preserving trauma in the unconscious'), it is in terms which are smart and easy to understand. And St Aubyn is still deliciously wicked in his satire . . . A shimmering work of multiple strengths. St Aubyn's ability to pierce the faŤade of moneyed politesse that veils cruel, hypocritical behaviour is as acute as Alan Hollinghurst's in The Line of Beauty . . . At Last is as close to a resolution as Patrick will ever come and ends, if not with unrealistic optimism, then at least with hope. Demons are forever, but we're privileged that St Aubyn chose to share his with us' - Independent on Sunday 'At Last! At last! Let the bells ring out, for here is the long-awaited and brilliant culmination of the Melrose family saga ; Brutally funny; This can be read as a standalone novel and those unfamiliar with St Aubyn's previous work will find much to enjoy. There's his mordant prose, his delightfully vicious dialogue, his shrewd insights and his elegant, aphoristic style ; This is an intoxicating read; Few contemporary novels are delivered with such vim and venom, and you're unlikely to read a better written one this year' - Sebastian Shakespeare, Tatler 'For those who have followed the Melrose family saga of Edward St Aubyn's fiction, this counts as a very sad moment: the author is killing off the semi-autobiographical series he began writing 22 years ago; [At Last] is filled with the savage social satire, existentialist rumination and rich interior monologues for which the author is known' - from the interview by Arifa Akbar in the Independent 'The slashing intelligence of Patrick's analysis of himself and his upper-crust world, combined with the epigrammatic wit of the dialogue (sometimes compared to Martin Amis, though Stoppard seems a closer match), gave what might have been a confessional exercise the reach and resonance of tragedy; The act of investigative self-repair has all along been the underlying project of these extraordinary novels. It is the source of their urgent emotional intensity, and the determining principle of their construction. For all their brilliant social satire, they are closer to the tight, ritualistic poetic drama of another era than the expansive comic fiction of our own; Much of the pleasure of At Last comes from the clash of these different perspectives as they shift and collide in Patrick's mercilessly lucid mind; [A] terrifying, spectacularly entertaining saga' - James Lasdun, 'Book of the Week', Guardian '[St Aubyn's writing is] archly cerebral, half-amused and surreptitiously humane; In the end, it is language that provides Patrick Đ and St Aubyn Đ with consolation. The ability to skewer unpleasantness with a verbal dart appears to be life's main satisfaction. In At Last, St Aubyn's satirical phrase-making is coolly piercing; Manifesting [a] mixture of social percipience and distinctive, intermittently cartoonish yet always elegant rhetoric, St Aubyn's Melrose novels now deserve to be thought of as an important roman-fleuve. The form's rewards are cumulative. With At Last, St Aubyn arrives at a knowingly bathetic conclusion: one of the pleasures of his writing is that it delights less in the high than in the comedown' - Henry Hitchings, Times Literary Supplement 'In most novels the elegant, hilarious or clever sentences stand out because they lie sufficiently far apart, but in At Last they are squashed together munificently on every page. Occasionally, the reader must pause at a description and give it the space and appreciation that would be given to a memorable line of poetry ; A humane and enchanting novel, which is profoundly funny, profoundly sad, and most of all profound' - Simon Baker, Literary Review 'Substantial, combining memorably awful characters with some very good jokes' - 4-star review, Mail on Sunday 'Conversations are richly sprinkled with Evelyn Waugh-style witticisms. [At Last] suggests that anyone who hasn't already would reap rich rewards from checking out the whole series' - Daily Mail 'You don't need to have read Edward St Aubyn's preceding novels to enjoy At Last; Nonetheless, such is the wealth of detail St Aubyn packs into every lacerating sentence, newcomers will probably be tempted back to the beginning of this story; At Last [is] a perfect stage for St Aubyn' immaculately controlled blend of farce and tragedy as Patrick is forced into several appalling Đ and appallingly funny Đ social encounters; The vinegary clarity St Aubyn brings to this grand story is breathtaking, as is the merciless wit [he] directs at his supporting cast; Mental health, psychological damage and the difficulty of finding a stable personal truth by which to live have rarely been written about with such intelligence and compassion, and although At Last ends on a quietly redemptive note, you can't help but wish Patrick Melrose's story was not over quite yet' - Claire Allfree, Metro 'At Last is an intense and savagely funny book laced with exquisitely observed human truths' - Miranda Collinge, Esquire 'This is the fifth novel that Edward St Aubyn has written about his alter ego Patrick Melrose, though it isn't too late to join in; Patrick's road to recovery deserves another book (at least). After this delicious instalment readers will want one too' - Daily Express 'The writing is brilliant and some of it is extraordinarily funny; brilliantly realised' - David Aaronovitch, 'Saturday Review', BBC Radio 4
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