Volume 55, Number 17 · November 6, 2008
Tempting Targets
By Francis Wyndham
Mother’s Milk
by Edward St. Aubyn
Open City, 235 pp., $23.00; $14.00 (paper)
Edward St. Aubyn's novels are so intoxicatingly witty that their high seriousness may not be immediately apparent. This seriousness is not tacked on as a solemn 'message'; it is intrinsic to his ferociously comic vision. Yet they cannot be described as social satires: there is no facile exaggeration, no smug misanthropy or studied indignation involved in the uncomfortable truths he tells. His first three books (Never Mind, Bad News, and Some Hope) were published separately between 1992 and 1994 and later together as a trilogy; his most recent work, Mother's Milk, can be fully understood and enjoyed on its own but is in fact a sequel featuring the same protagonist, Patrick Melrose.
Review, 2561 words
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