Mother’s Milk, the fourth book about Patrick Melrose took me the longest to read and was the first book in the series that actually made me doubt the decision to read any series at all. You get attached to the characters and so you keep paddling through the books even when you are not enjoying them anymore. At least that’s what’s been happening with me and Patrick Melrose books.

What’s the book about?

The fourth book focuses on a few important situations in Patrick’s life, mainly through the eyes of new and much younger characters. Just as all previous three books it only tells you about a couple of events that take place within quite a short period of time. Thus, all development of the story basically revolves around characters’ thoughts and feelings rather than their actions.

What I liked about the book

The writing is again thought-provoking and beautiful,

‘We think the purpose of a child is to grow up because it does grow up. But its purpose is to play, to enjoy itself, to be a child. It we merely look at the end of the process, the purpose of life is death.’

People died of feelings all the time, once they had gone through the formality of materialising them into bullets and bottles and tumours.

It was easy to see what was sick, but it was so difficult to know what it meant to be well.

‘A man may smile and smile and be a villain.’

with its classic dark humor,

In the end, it was even harder to behave badly than to behave well. That was the trouble of not being a psychopath.

He definitely had a Tamazepam problem, namely, that it wasn’t strong enough.

and with its perfectly captured human nature.

…necessary egotism of someone who needed to get a self back in order to sacrifice it again.

Her profound inability to listen to anyone else was unhappily married to a hysterical concern about what other people thought of her.

Eleanor believed more or less anything, as long as it was untrue.

…she was going to dedicate her life to helping others, as long as they weren’t related to her.

Noticing the arrival of her family, his grandmother organized her face into a smile, but her eyes remained detached from the process, frozen in bewilderment and pain.

Mary was such a devoted mother because she knew what it felt like not to have one. Patrick also knew what it felt like, and as a former beneficiary of Mary’s maternal overdrive, he sometimes had to remind himself that he wasn’t an infant any more, to argue that there were real children in the house, not yet horror-trained; he sometimes had to give himself a good talking to. […] Being surrounded by children only brought him closer to his own childishness.

The kids

This book takes kids seriously. They are not just accessories for adults’ lives or levers for a plot development. Their thoughts and feelings are as important as the ones of adult characters.

That was the trouble with grown-ups: they always wanted to be the centre of attention, with their battering rams of food, and their sleep routines and their obsession with making you learn what they knew and forget what they had forgotten.

Whenever he was hurt he reverted to calling myself ‘you’, although he had discovered the proper use of the first person singular six months ago. Until then, he had referred to himself as ‘you’ on the perfectly logical grounds that everyone else did. He also referred to others as ‘I’, on the perfectly logical grounds that that was how they referred to themselves.

The resolutions

Even though it seemed pretty impossible, the story did progress to some resolutions which was really satisfying.

What I liked less about the book

As you might have guessed already, the lack of action in this book is close to a torture. It gets so boring that even the perfect writing and close-ups of disturbed souls don’t make up for it. The characters are like bugs frozen in amber. They are perfect and realistic, and yet you can’t get rid of the feeling that they are supposed to be doing something more in life.

Would I recommend this book?

Unfortunately I wouldn’t, which is really a shame. This is a remarkable piece of real literature with unique deep writing but I personally just don’t know readers who can be OK with such stillness of the plot.

Here are the reviews of the previous novels in the series: Never Mind, Patrick Melrose novel #1 , Bad News, Patrick Melrose novel #2, Some Hope, Patrick Melrose #3.

I just realised that telling you about each of the novels in the series can be a spoiler on its own. I mean, this way you learn that Patrick, a survivor of a horrible childhood and a person with a history of drug addiction, doesn’t die and continues to grow older. Thus, if you want to dive into the novels completely unaware of the story’s direction, you might want to ignore my reviews of the novels completely. I still give out no spoilers in each review, so decide for yourself. Here’s my review of Some Hope, the third novel about Patrick Melrose.

What is it like?

First of all, it’s easier to read. At some point I even checked if I was really reading a Melrose novel because the sentences of the first two books took much longer to unravel. The hallmark sharp writing that reveals people’s essence in just one sentence is still here.

Bridget seldom found the time to see her daughter. She could not forgive her for being a girl…

Johny looked at Amanda and marvelled again at the phenomenon of pretty girls who were not at all sexy.

Obeying the law that people always loathe those they have wronged, Sonny found himself especially allergic to Bridget…

Alexander Politsky, whose extreme Englishness derived from his being Russian, was perhaps the last man in England to use the term ‘old bean’ sincerely.

The humour is still here too.

‘Do you know where we are?’ asked Tom.

‘Sure,’ said Anne. ‘We’re out of our minds.’

Patrick is as quotable as ever.

‘One seldom knows whether perseverance is noble or stupid until it’s too late.’

‘It was a terrible shock to me when I realized I was getting too old to die young anymore.’

‘There’s no point in staying stuck,’ Patrick agreed. ‘But there’s even less point in pretending to be free.’

I could probably quote the whole book to you. I had to restrain myself from sharing all of the quotes so that you can discover the gems for yourself.

What’s wrong with the book, then?

Have you seen all those people in the quotes? There are actually even more of them. They all keep talking all the time! Do you see how awesome Patrick is, how interesting it is to listen to him? Well, there isn’t enough of him in this book. All those strangers keep philosophising at a dinner party, but with all due respect to them, I’m in this for Patrick not for them. That’s why I’m giving the book 3.5 stars. The lack of any action played its role too. One single step that Patrick takes towards hope is really meaningful but not enough for a reader who’s been dragging through tons of strangers’ conversations!

So, is there any hope?

Yes, there definitely is, but don’t hold your breath, it’s just a glimmer of hope.

Will I continue with the series?

I’m already continuing. I’m reading the fourth novel at the moment. I can’t let go of the writing that is so perfect. In his novels Edward St. Aubyn is doing the main thing that I love about literature. He’s cutting to the core with just a few phrases. He’s giving names to the things that you feel were always there but you become fully aware of them only when they acquire form. Edward St. Aubyn achieves this in all the three Patrick Melrose novels that I’ve read so far.

Here are the reviews of the previous novels in the series: Never Mind, Patrick Melrose novel #1 and Bad News, Patrick Melrose novel #2.

The Seven Sisters drew the most attention in my Currently Reading in November post so I’m reviewing it first.

General information about The Seven Sisters by Lucinda Riley

The Seven Sisters is the first book in the series about young women who were adopted as kids by a rich man. They were brought up in a secluded castle in Switzerland, each of them developing their own skills and talents. When their father dies, he leaves them letters with clues on how to discover more about their histories. There are now 5 books in the series, but there will be more. The Seven Sisters focuses on the history of the eldest sister only. There’s actually a book trailer for The Seven Sisters! (I didn’t even know such things existed.) I don’t think the trailer does the book justice. It makes the book sound rather silly and simplistic. The Seven Sisters is much more sophisticated. Just in case you are interested, here’s the trailer.

What’s good about The Seven Sisters

This book is definitely a great way to travel across continents and times. When Maia, the protagonist, is discovering the truth about her great-grandparents, the narration shifts from modern times to Brazil during the times when the famous statue of Christ was being built.

The book is about relationships and love stories (right, not one but a few!) The writing is quite good. The story develops in an interesting and unpredictable way. There are many curious historical facts and descriptions of the life in old France and Brazil.

What I personally didn’t like that much in The Seven Sisters 

Some descriptions

I’m not a big fan of romance genre. I like any good stories, including love stories, but all these “he pressed his lips to hers” and other romanticised language yank me back from the book to reality. I can’t immerse myself into stories where women grew noticeably pale because they just thought about their lovers. It sounds overplayed and fake to me.

Erratic behaviour

One of the characters is pure Jekyll and Hyde. At one moment he’s warm and understanding, at another one he’s a selfish drunk, then he’s back to a good chap again. It was hard not to notice that his pendulum-like behaviour was for the sake of the plot only.

The protagonist also behaves strangely sometimes, but alright, I’ll agree to believe that this is just the way she is.

The series effect

It’s absolutely OK for the series not to uncover all information in the first book so that readers can look forward to some discoveries in the next one. To be fair, all the main questions about Maia were answered in the first book. Still, I’d been looking for the series that would attract by their protagonist only, by how good they are, not by leaving something untold. I mean the series like Sherlock Holmes, for example. People love it because of Sherlock and because of stories themselves, not because they need to know who that mysterious boy two books ago was. Thus, I will have to continue my search for the perfect series.

Final thought on The Seven Sisters

The Seven Sisters is very well-written and entertaining. If you like stories about love, relationships and different epochs, then this book is definitely for you.