Mother's Milk
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More About the Author
Product Description
Waterstone's Books Quarterly
'The mix of well-structured story, waspish wit and extraordinary
style is truly dazzling.'
style is truly dazzling.'
Charles Spencer, Summer Reading Special, Independent on Sunday
'Mother's Milk is, put simply, brilliant...quite unforgettable.'
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
78 of 84 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Painfully hilarious,
By
This review is from: Mother's Milk (Hardcover)
The story is painful; the setting all too familiar and real; writing suffused with irony, metaphors and witticisms - behold Mother's Milk. Hermoine Lee, the chair of the judges of this year's Booker entries, described this book as "wickedly funny." And she would be right.I began this book with no particular enthusiasm, but a little research on the internet gave me enough background about the author to place the work in its context. And this work centres around one theme - the place of a mother in, and how it pervades into the depth of every aspect of, a simple family. Patrick Melrose is suffering from a midlife crisis. His wife, Mary, has just given birth to her second son, Thomas, and has become extremely close to him - to the point of sacrificing her sexual, and to some extent, emotional connection with her husband. Patrick, the lawyer, successfully manages to pass on his sarcasm and twisted daggers of wit straight to his precocious first son, Robert, who, by the age of five, becomes a master in impersonating other people. While St Aubyn takes us through the functioning of this rather functional family, we see each character in relation to their mother, and how it has shaped their past, present, and future. The contrast between self-sacrificing Mary's self-obsessed mother and the betrayed and disappointed Patrick's philanthropist and neglectful mother is incisive. The novel touches among various aspects of contemporary family life, particularly of parenting, marriage, relationships, trust, adultery, and euthanasia. The novel is described through wide-ranging narratives during four summers of 2000 to 2003. The beauty of St Aubyn's prose lies in his choice of the person through whom he narrates each section. At first, we hear the funny and sometimes deceptively cruel Robert, and his slow transformation into the persona that is his father. Then comes Patrick himself, with his disappointment with his wife, his self-loathing, and the guilt he feels about committing adultery. Third comes Mary, and we see the maternal side to St Aubyn's story. The final summer is rather nondescript, and serves its purpose well. The lack of any ciches, be it in the plot, the prose, or the characters, came as a welcome relief. The normality of the characters was most striking. One cannot elevate the moral stature of any character; nor would the intelligent reader. If he did, he is missing the author's loud and clear message. The criticisms of the so-called New Age practices, and of the American lifestyle, particularly in the post 9/11 era, or as Patrick calls it, the 9/12 era, are well-founded, and in a style much reminiscent of Oscar Wilde mercilessly dissecting Victorian hypocrisies in his play, are explored with unabashed saracasm. This book may not linger on in your mind as a powerful and evocative novel. But, it does have several thought-provoking ideas which merit consideration... If that is not good enough for you, you ought to read this novel for the sheer beauty of St Aubyn's prose.
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Style and substance,
By
This review is from: Mother's Milk (Hardcover)
This is a beautifully written and sharply comic short novel. The main pleasure of reading this novel is St Aubyn's precision with words; there's rarely a wasted sentence, and long winded and pointless descriptions of the environment or the characters that inhabit it are refreshingly absent. He is a prose stylist like John Banville, but the scales tip more to the comic than the tragic with St Aubyn's writing, and as a result the plot and characters seem a bit insubstantial at times. In many ways, overlooking the sex and language, Mother's Milk is a very Edwardian novel in the way it treats these fairly unlikeable upper class English characters--at times dismissive but sympathetic to their plights. The narratives of Robert, Patrick and Mary are crisp, wry and often very funny. Robert's entry to the world in the first section of the book is a sharp and startling introduction to the novel. Whilst it is not a book that will linger long in the mind of the reader, it is nonetheless a rewarding read.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mother's Milk,
By
This review is from: Mother's Milk (Kindle Edition)
Following on from the Patrick Melrose trilogy (The Patrick Melrose Trilogy), we meet Patrick again when he is 42. This novel takes place over four summers, from the birth of Patrick's second son, Thomas, to his third year. Although this book can be read alone, it makes more sense if you have read the trilogy first and I would urge you to do so. As much of the first three books were about, either directly or indirectly, Patrick's relationship with his father, we now move on to the non relationship with his mother, Eleanor.When we first meet Patrick, at the age of five, he is living in France with his abusive and unpleasant father and his alcoholic mother, Eleanor. Having been through drug addiction, Patrick's self destructive behaviour has led him to inherit Eleanor's alcoholism. As always, his sense of injustice is heightened by his parents behaviour - in this case, Eleanor's disinheriting his sons, Robert and Thomas, and leaving his childhood home to a man who is running a self help, new age centre. The family are supposed to be able to use the house for a holiday in the summer, but Patrick's sense of acute anger and misery makes the whole event something of an endurance test and you can easily understand why his wife, Mary, retreats into the more uncomplicated love she shares with Thomas. The finale of these exruciating holiday trips is an ill advised attempt to holiday in the States. Edward St Aubyn writes such stunning and beautiful prose the book is a delight. You are instantly aware of what each person is thinking and feeling and he writes of what the children are experiencing and thinking with intensity. Robert is obviously a gifted and bright little boy, but St Aubyn uses Thomas's more uncomplicated and valid feelings, as the book progresses. This whole novel, in fact, encompasses far more points of view than the earlier books, which are told mainly from Patrick's point of view. I liked Mary and sympathised with her, while still seeing Patrick's point of view, as I was familiar with his life story and why he was attuned to find doom in every event and retreat into sarcasm as an armour. Although the book sounds depressing, there are many humourous moments in all of the books. The trip to America, in particular, had me laughing out loud. Patrick is so unpleasant, so funny, so vulnerable, that he is one of my favourite fictional characters. I rate all these books highly and I am looking forward to the last book in the series, At Last with great anticipation.
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