Mother's milk : a novel

Format:

Book

Title:

Mother's milk : a novel

Author:

St. Aubyn, Edward, 1960-

ISBN:

9781890447403

9781890447427

Edition:

1st ed.

Publication Information:

Physical Description:

235 pages ; 22 cm

Summary:

A brillant and scathingly funny family portrait that shows the shifting allegiances between parents, children, husbands and wives. The author combines the most excruciating pain with the driest comedy.

Subject(s):

Parent and adult child -- Fiction.

Marital conflict -- Fiction.

New Age movement -- Fiction.

Mothers and sons -- Fiction.

Disinheritance -- Fiction.

Motherhood -- Fiction.

English fiction -- 21st century.

England -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

England -- Fiction.

England.

Genre:

Psychological fiction.

Domestic fiction.

Fiction.

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... McMinnville Public Library	St. Aubyn, E.	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Writing with the scathing wit and bright perceptiveness for which he has become known, celebrated English author Edward St. Aubyn creates a complex family portrait that examines the shifting allegiances between mothers, sons, and husbands. The novel's perspective ricochets among all members of the Melrose family -- the family featured in St. Aubyn's widely praised trilogy, Some Hope -- starting with Robert, who provides an exceptionally droll and convincing account of being born; to Patrick, a hilariously churlish husband who has been sexually abandoned by his wife in favor of his sons; to Mary, who's consumed by her children and overwhelming desire not to repeat the mistakes of her own mother. All the while, St. Aubyn examines the web of false promises that entangle this once illustrious family -- whose last vestige of wealth, an old house in the south of France -- is about to be donated by Patrick's mother to a New Age foundation. An up-to-the-minute dissection of the mores of child-rearing, marriage, adultery, and assisted suicide, Mother's Milk showcases St. Aubyn's luminous and acidic prose -- and his masterful ability to combine the most excruciating emotional pain with the driest comedy.

Reviews (1)

Publisher's Weekly Review

This elegant and witty satire on the dissatisfactions of family life, which continues the story of Patrick Melrose, the hero of St. Aubyn's U.S. debut (Some Hope), opens in August 2000 at Patrick's mother's home in the south of France, with Patrick's five-year-old son, Robert, remembering with preternatural clarity the circumstances of his birth. No one on this vacation is particularly happy; Robert realizes he's being displaced by the arrival of baby brother Thomas, and Patrick is furious because his mother plans to leave her house (and what remains of her fortune) to Seamus Dourke, a ridiculous New Age guru. Over the next three Augusts, the Melrose story unfolds from different points of view: Patrick is deep in the throes of a midlife crisis; Mary, his wife, feels her self has been obliterated by the incessant demands of motherhood; and the two precociously verbal children struggle to make sense of the complexities of life. The narrative itself is thin, but the pleasures of the book reside in the author's droll observations (overweight Americans, for example, have "become their own air-bag systems in a dangerous world"). It's yet another novel about familial dysfunction but told in a fresh, acerbic way. Agent, Gillon Aitken (U.K.). (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved