Some Hope

I truly don't understand the reviewers of this book who maunder on about how it was well written, but that they couldn't really get into it because the characters weren't likable. My God, have they never read "Madame Bovary"? I read a book for fascination, not necessarily to meet sweet people with darling personalities. This book is harrowing and wildly funny. It is the single best descrption of drug addiction I've ever... Read Full Review

SOME HOPE is made up of three novellas, each featuring the experiences of Patrick Melrose during a 24-hour (±) ordeal. In each, St. Aubyn explores Patrick's relationship with David Melrose, his snobby, controlling, and repellent father. The first novella, NEVER MIND, shows Patrick as a wee boy as he suffers loneliness, neglect, and physical abuse. The second, BAD NEWS, follows Patrick in his early twenties on a hilarious... Read Full Review

Some Hope by Edward St. Aubyn is a trilogy of novellas about the cruel and sadistic British aristocrat David Melrose. In some ways, the book is really about son Patrick Melrose who suffers at the hands of both his perverse father and his drug-addicted mother. The first novella is literally saturated with examples of the evility of David Melrose and the sufferings of his family at his hands. In the second novella, son Patrick... Read Full Review

Difficult read, in the best sense of the phrase. Characters drip with egotism. Prose is spare, unforgiving, and surprisingly unjaded at times. Written by a professional. Why write such a thing? Is this what teaches us to live? It teaches us what it us to live. Like looking at the question of evil from a religious perspective, only this seems purely secular. Does it have lasting value? At least a few hours, so far... Read Full Review

This fascinating but harrowing volume comprises three novellas about Patrick Melrose - as a young boy at his parents' French villa, as a drug-addled young man on the loose in Manhattan, and as sober guest at a British country-house party in honor of Princess Margaret. In economical and blackly humorous prose, St. Aubyn fleshes out a memorable cast of characters. The stand-out is Patrick's monstrous father, who practices... Read Full Review