A review by mohsints
The Patrick Melrose Novels by Edward St. Aubyn

5.0

Dark, funny, tragic and utterly enthralling, St. Aubyn's book is a grand piece of work, outdone only by its author, upon whose own life it's apparently based. Four novels track the childhood (perpetual, even after decades) of Patrick Melrose, victim of child abuse, his own tendencies towards narcotics, and the possessor of all the moral fibre of a dog in heat. The characters are all larger than life; the dialogue is almost always sharp and poignantly pointed; if this series has a flaw, it's that it ends in an unsatisfactory fashion. The joy of reading it though, offsets that completely.