First published 2012
Five-year-old Patrick Melrose cowers under the sadistic control of his father David at the family chateau in southern France, while his wealthy American mother Eleanor retreats into unhappy silence. Years later, at twenty-two, Patrick flies to New York to collect his father's ashes, spending a drug-fueled day shooting heroin through Manhattan. Back in England, a sober Patrick attempts recovery, wrestling with the damage inflicted by his upbringing. As an adult with his own family, he returns to the same French chateau where his childhood horrors began. Now Patrick faces his mother's wish for assisted suicide, his crumbling marriage, infidelity, and the painful loss of the family estate to a New Age foundation. St. Aubyn traces Patrick's journey from child abuse victim to heroin addict to struggling father, exposing the moral bankruptcy beneath aristocratic wealth. The novels reveal a world where privilege becomes prison, where money cannot purchase redemption, and where the sins of one generation poison the next.
Genres: addiction, abuse, adult-fiction, biographical-fiction
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Setting: Southern France, New York, England
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
680 pages · Paperback · Picador
Content warnings: child-abuse, drug-use, mental-illness