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.

Bad News is the second novel in the series about Patrick Melrose. I already reviewed the first novel, called Never Mind. The first novel depicts one day in Patrick’s childhood. It’s enough to watch just that one day to understand that Patrick’s later life won’t be easy. In Bad News the fears for Patrick get confirmed. Bad News is bad news indeed.

About the book

Just like the first book, the second book feels like one gigantic chapter rather than a novel. Patrick is in his twenties now. He’s on a trip to New York to deal with an unpleasant family matter. Also, Patrick is a drug addict.

The way other people felt about love, he felt about heroin, and he felt about love the way other people felt about heroin.

He’s not in good shape at all.

The full lips were pinches inward, the eyes reduced to narrow slits, the nose, which was permanently blocked, forced him to breathe through his open mouth and made him look rather imbecilic…

Having read this description I thought that literary Patrick probably didn’t look much like Cumberbatch who played Patrick in the series.

What I like about the book

I actually like almost everything about it, but it doesn’t mean that I will be recommending it. I’ll soon explain why.

Writing

Just like in the first book, the writing in Bad News is perfect. It’s ruthless, precise and cuts straight to the core.

Jefferson and Patrick parted with the genuine warmth of people who had exploited each other successfully.

There are some very nasty people in the world and it is a pity if one of them is your father.

Patrick could hear the nervous tension in Debbie’s voice, the inherited anxiety about the correct thing to say.

He swivelled his eyes around the room with reptilian coldness.

Surely: the adverb of a man without an argument.

No topic is a taboo.

…when people are cremated one never really gets their ashes, just some communal rakings from the bottom of the oven.

Unexpectedly, there’s a lot of humour in the book too.

‘Would you care for a dessert, sir?’

At last, a real person with a real question, albeit a rather bizarre question. How was he supposed to ‘care for’ a dessert? Did he have to visit it on Sundays? Send it a Christmas card? Did he have to feed it?

Also, it was surprising to discover that Patrick and I have the same opinion when it comes to restaurants’ menus. At least when Patrick is on drugs…

There were pages of dead things – cows, shrimps, pigs, oysters, lambs – stretched out like a casualty list, accompanied by a brief description of how they had been treated since they died – skewed, grilled, smoked, and boiled. Christ, if they thought he was going to eat these things they must be mad.

I also liked Patrick himself

Patrick is an addict. He’s experiencing a very serious trauma. Of course, he can’t be charming, and yet he’s still likeable. You can see that he could be a very nice human being, had he been born into another family.

What I didn’t like in the book

I now understand that this is the format of these books but I still can’t enjoy it much. The book is too short (don’t confuse it with a quick read, it isn’t). It doesn’t feel like a complete book, more like a very detailed episode of a show (no wonder it was picked up for one). I wish each book told more.

A warning, or why I won’t be recommending this book

Drug abuse. Patrick takes so many drugs and the process is so vividly described that I felt as if I’d accompanied Patrick on all his nightmarish trips. Thus, even though I will go on with the series myself, because I do think it’s perfect literature, the themes are too complicated for the book to be recommended to everybody. I know that many people won’t be able to handle such read.

About the book

Never Mind is a book about several people from high society, some of whom are dysfunctional and some are pure evil, and a child who has to live among them.

There are five novels about Patrick Melrose. This first one tells about a single day from Patrick’s childhood. The novel was published in 1992. Patrick is just five years old in the story (so the photo of Cumberbatch on the cover is quite misleading even though he played grown-up Patrick in the series based on the novels). The last novel, called At Last, was published in 2011. Which means that, theoretically, Patrick had time to grow up and look more like Cumberbatch in the later books. I’m being that careful in my predictions because of what I now know about Patrick’s childhood. I’m absolutely not sure what his future might be like.

The novel is very short, there are only 181 pages in it. It feels more like a first act of a theatrical performance. The amount of action would fit into a mid-sized short story. The action, though is not the main treasure of the book. It’s the writing and the way it reveals the characters that make this book very special.

What I liked in this book

Humour

For the fist several pages I was sure the whole book would be hilarious. I had no idea about the horrors that were coming so I was just laughing out loud at phrases like these:

Patrick’s own nanny was dead. A friend of his mother’s said she had gone to heaven, but Patrick had been there and knew perfectly well that they had put her in a wooden box and dropped her in a hole. Heaven was the other direction…

… a civil servant who was widely thought to be a spy because his job sounded too dull to exist.

The writing

It’s not about how the writing sounds, it’s about the things it exposes. It’s sharp, witty and ironical.

They turned into self-parodies without going to the trouble of acquiring a self first.

He was one of those Englishmen who was always saying silly things to sound less pompous, and pompous things to sound less silly.

The characters are created in the same way. Most of them are despicable but you can see each layer of their corrupted souls, and that’s why they draw your attention.

Diagnosis had been his most intoxicating skill as a doctor and after exhibiting it he had often lost interest in his patients, unless something about their suffering intrigued him.

A dark red and heavily gilded chair that Eleanor’s American grandmother had prised from an old Venetian family on one of her acquisitive sweeps through Europe gleamed against the opposite wall of the room. He enjoyed the scandal connected with its acquisition and, knowing that it should be carefully preserved in a museum, he made a point of sitting on it as often as possible.

‘D’you believe in capital punishment?’ piped up Bridget.

‘Not since it ceased to be a public occasion’, said David.

A few warnings about the book

Even though the book is short I wouldn’t say it’s a fast read. The writing is not that transparent. You have to slow down and focus on each phrase to grasp the full meaning of what’s going on.

The novel doesn’t feel like a completed story. You will have to read the next books in the series to learn what eventually happens to Patrick Melrose.

Another, and much more serious warning is about violence and abuse, portrayed so skilfully that you can imagine all omitted details even better than those that are shown.

Final thoughts

I will definitely continue with Patrick Melrose novels, even though now I’m not sure I would be able to stomach the TV show. I would recommend this book very carefully, in the same way that I would recommend Nabokov’s Lolita. I personally think it’s a true work of art but I’m not sure what effect such art can have on others.