The Patrick Melrose Novels: Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, Mother’s Milk, at Last

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

Edward St Aubyn chronicled the life of Patrick Melrose in five short novels that 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 lavishly decadent high-society party in London. 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. Taken together, The Patrick Melrose Novels provides one of the most thrilling and unforgettable reading experiences in contemporary fiction.

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.

EDWARD ST. AUBYN was born in London in 1960. His acclaimed Patrick Melrose novels are Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, Mother’s Milk (winner of the Prix Femina étranger and shortlisted for the Booker Prize), and At Last. 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 academic, newspaper columnist, and author. He is Emeritus Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London. He has twice served as a judge for the Booker Prize and writes regularly for The Guardian.