Volume 51, Number 5 · March 25, 2004
Vile Bodies
By Gabriele Annan
Some Hope: A Trilogy
by Edward St. Aubyn
Open City Books, 336 pp., $14.95 (paper)
Edward St. Aubyn's three short novels are hilarious and harrowing by turns, sophisticated, reflective, and brooding. They were first published separately in the UK—the first and second in 1992, the third in 1994. Each is not much over one hundred pages long, and perhaps that was the reason for uniting them now in a single volume. They share one hero, many subsidiary characters, and have an autobiographical feel, describing three stages in one man's life: early childhood, youth, and early adulthood. Each section is completely different in setting, tone, and mood. The missing years remain blank, and the sharp breaks between the sections are disconcerting. This may be the writer's intention, but more probably it was the publisher's decision to publish the books as a trilogy; each section is neither quite a novel nor a novella.
Review, 2968 words
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