The Patrick Melrose Novels: Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, Mother's Milk, at Last (Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics) - Hardcover

St Aubyn, Edward

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1101908521 ISBN 13: 9781101908525

Publisher: Everyman's Library, 2025

Synopsis

A beautiful Contemporary Classics hardcover omnibus edition of all five Patrick Melrose novels, one of the greatest fiction cycles of our time

Set in a world of decadence, greed, snobbery, and cruelty, Edward St Aubyn's brilliant short novels paint a harrowing and darkly hilarious portrait of the English upper class. Patrick's story of abuse, addiction, and recovery follows him across decades of his life in settings ranging from the Melrose family's chateau in the South of France to the gritty streets of lower Manhattan to a riotously lavish high-society party at an English country house.

We first meet Patrick as a sensitive five-year-old terrorized by the sadism of his domineering father and the succeeding volumes give us glimpses of his life as he moves through drug-addicted young adulthood into middle age and parenthood, in an ongoing struggle for emotional stability that is both comic and heartbreaking. The stunning final volume, At Last, takes place over the single day of a momentous funeral, and offers Patrick the possibility of finding a measure of peace.

Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.

About this title

About the Author

EDWARD ST AUBYN was born in London in 1960. His novel Mother's Milk was awarded the Prix Femina étranger and shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He is also the author of A Clue to the Exit, On the Edge (short-listed for the Guardian Fiction Prize), Lost for Words (winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize), Double Blind, and Dunbar, his reimagining of King Lear for the Hogarth Shakespeare project.

About the Introducer: JOHN SUTHERLAND is a British author, columnist, and professor at University College London. He writes for The Guardian and has twice served as a judge for the Booker Prize.

Edition details

• Publisher: Everyman's Library
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1101908521
• ISBN 13: 9781101908525
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 808