The Patrick Melrose Novels

I read this New Yorker profile on St. Aubyn (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/02/inheritance) a few years ago, and then recalled it when I stumbled across a used and very cheap version of this compilation at Powell's last year. I'm tagging this as memoir as well as novels because the interview, as well as other things St. Aubyn has said, make clear how closely aspects of the novels hewed to his own life. I really enjoyed these for two reasons. First, St. Aubyn's prose is phenomenal. Second, he created art out of significant childhood trauma in a very psychologically savvy way. “Never Mind” and “Mother's Milk” are easily my favorite of the four, because one of St. Aubyn's unusual gifts is narrating children's interior lives in an evocative way that is both developmentally astute and respectful of their intelligence. A few quotes about developing language in “Mother's Milk” particularly bowled me over, I think because St. Aubyn shines the most when narrating a child's character not based on his own experience:

“Something had started to happen as he became dominated by talk. His early memories were breaking off, like slabs from those orange cliffs behind him, and crashing into an all-consuming sea which only glared back at him when he tried to look into it. His infancy was being obliterated by his childhood. He wanted it back, otherwise Thomas would have the whole thing.” (p. 449)

“Once you locked into language, all you could do was shuffle the greasy pack of a few thousand words that millions of people had used before. There might be little moments of freshness, not because the life of the world has been successfully translated but because a new life has been made out of this thought stuff. But before the thoughts got mixed up with words, it wasn't as if the dazzle of the world hadn't been exploding in the sky of his attention.” (p. 461)

It'll be interesting to read “At Last” to finish off the Patrick Melrose cycle.