Never Mind - The Patrick Melrose Novels (Paperback)
  • Never Mind - The Patrick Melrose Novels (Paperback)
zoom

Never Mind - The Patrick Melrose Novels (Paperback)

(author)
3 Reviews Sign in to write a review
£9.99
Paperback 208 Pages
Published: 12/04/2012
  • 5+ in stock

Usually dispatched within 1-2 working days

  • This item has been added to your basket
Waterstones Says

A triumph of prose style and deft characterisation, the first book in the Patrick Melrose sequence is a scintillating deconstruction of family and gilded innocence that sets the standard that the following novels met with such elegance.

Never Mind is the first in Edward St Aubyn's semi-autobiographical Patrick Melrose novels, adapted for TV for Sky Atlantic and starring Benedict Cumberbatch as aristocratic addict, Patrick.

At his mother's family house in the south of France, Patrick Melrose has the run of a magical garden. Bravely imaginative and self-sufficient, five-year-old Patrick encounters the volatile lives of adults with care.

His father, David, rules with considered cruelty, and Eleanor, his mother, has retreated into drink. They are expecting guests for dinner. But this afternoon is unlike the chain of summer days before, and the shocking events that precede the guests' arrival tear Patrick's world in two.

Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 9781447202936
Number of pages: 208
Weight: 142 g
Dimensions: 197 x 130 x 16 mm


MEDIA REVIEWS

‘The Melrose sequence is now clearly one of the major achievements of contemporary British fiction. Stingingly well-written and exhilaratingly funny’ David Sexton, Evening Standard

'Perhaps the most brilliant English novelist of his generation' Alan Hollinghurst

‘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

‘St Aubyn’s prose has an easy charm that masks a ferocious, searching intellect. One of the finest writers of his generation’ The Times

‘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, Harpers

‘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

‘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

‘Clearly one of the major achievements of contemporary British fiction. Stingingly well-written and exhilaratingly funny’ David Sexton, Evening Standard

‘Beautifully written, excruciatingly funny and also very tragic’ Mariella Frostrup, Sky Magazine

‘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 . . . A terrifying, spectacularly entertaining saga’ James Lasdun, Guardian

‘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

‘St Aubyn conveys the chaos of emotion, the confusion of heightened sensation, and the daunting contradictions of intellectual endeavour with a force and subtlety that have an exhilarating, almost therapeutic effect’ Francis Wyndham, New York Review of Books

‘A masterpiece. Edward St Aubyn is a writer of immense gifts’ Patrick McGrath

‘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

'One of the most amazing reading experiences I've had in a decade.' Michael Chabon, LA Times

You may also be interested in...

Intermezzo
Added to basket
£20.00   £16.99
Hardback
The Pumpkin Spice Cafe
Added to basket
£9.99   £8.49
Paperback
The Cinnamon Bun Book Store
Added to basket
£9.99   £8.49
Paperback
We Solve Murders
Added to basket
£22.00   £16.99
Hardback
How To Solve Your Own Murder
Added to basket
£9.99   £7.99
Paperback
Moscow X
Added to basket
£9.99   £8.49
Paperback
North Woods
Added to basket
£9.99   £8.49
Paperback
A Court of Thorns and Roses
Added to basket
£8.99   £6.99
Paperback
Butter
Added to basket
£14.99
Paperback
Yellowface
Added to basket
£9.99   £8.49
Paperback
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
Added to basket
£9.99   £7.99
Paperback
The Wrong Sister
Added to basket
£9.99   £7.99
Paperback
Starling House
Added to basket
£9.99   £7.99
Paperback
Orbital
Added to basket
£9.99   £8.49
Paperback
Close to Death
Added to basket
£9.99   £7.99
Paperback
Faebound
Added to basket
£9.99   £8.49
Paperback
It Ends With Us
Added to basket
£9.99   £7.99
Paperback
The Empusium
Added to basket
£12.99
Paperback

“spare and beautiful”

Not a book for the fainthearted; it deals with the difficult world of the moneyed Melrose family. The patriach is cruel and spoilt and the beautiful Provencal world that he and his family inhabit, unravels for all... More

Paperback edition
Helpful? Upvote 49

“Precise and claustorophobic”

REVIEW ORIGINALLY POSTED ON ABOOKORTEN.CO.UK

This is the first of the Patrick Melrose novels, and chronicles a day in the south of France while the eponymous character is five years old, surrounded by his drug- and... More

Paperback edition
2 similar books recommended
Helpful? Upvote 40

“Horrid people.”

If you enjoy reading about horrible, snobbish bullies treating other people in vile and contemptible ways, then this is for you. I found it most unpleasant.
Undoubtedly written by a clever and intelligent author,... More

Paperback edition
Helpful? Upvote 3

Please sign in to write a review

Your review has been submitted successfully.