Edward St Aubyn - Never Mind

This is the first book in a five-part series, and I felt after finishing it that I had really just read an extraordinary introduction to a larger story. Which is not to say that this book is not satisfying in and of itself - it is, deeply so - it just left me ready to immediately plunge into book two (which I did, by the way - with the next review to follow promptly).

I have had two people (one of them my erudite, extremely well-read mother) recently recommend St Aubyn's Patrick Melrose series to me, in particularly glowing terms. Maybe it was that hype which influenced my reading of the first few chapters, so that I was initially disappointed. Although the writing was spectacular from the beginning, for me the story unfolded slowly, like the earliest budding of a spring bloom. The exception, of course, was a scene in the first chapter describing a date which involved an extraordinary request by David Melrose, one of the protagonists, for a repulsive act of submission from the woman who would later become his wife. As it turns out, this was not even close to the most disturbing scene in the book.

St Aubyn chooses to tell Never Mind from the perspective of a third person omniscient narrator, and he employs this style to its hilt, by rushing in and out of the minds of different characters at dazzling speed. Very few writers can pull this off so convincincly - St Aubyn is one of them. I think the chopping and changing of the narrative threw me off initially, so that it took me a few chapeters to become fully immersed - but then, all of a sudden - whoosh! After three chapters or so of umm-ing and ah-ing, I was sucked in so thoroughly that the next time I looked up I was only a few pages away from finishing the book! Very odd indeed. I felt like I had been pulled into a vortex and then cast out the other side gasping for air, and gasping for more. I don't know if that has ever happened to me before, with a book. It was truly a bizarre reading experience, and I already know that more of the same awaits, in the next books of the series.

Never Mind covers a period of about 24 hours in the lives of exceptionally well-off British aristocrats who represent the very worst of English arrogance. David Melrose and his wife, Eleonor, live in Lacoste, France, and are hosting a dinner party for some of their 'closest friends' - none of whom escape David's scathing tongue or social critique. The book follows the various invitees in the lead-up to the dinner party, and during the party itself, but central to the story - although he is too young to attend the dinner - is the five year old son of David and Eleonor, Patrick Melrose. I have never read such a heartbreaking account of the abuse and pure neglect of a child. For St Aubyn to have conveyed this bleak, desperately sad childhood through the detail and description of just one day in the life of young Patrick, is quite remarkable.

Patrick is a loner because he has no choice in the matter. His father is a sociopath and his mother is a drug-addled alcoholic who is too weak to leave his father and too insecure to exert even the most basic maternal effort. He once had a nanny, but she has died by the time the book begins and his father has asserted that - at five - Patrick is too old to have another one. Patrick's valiant attempts to overcome these significant obstacles, by resorting to the very essence of boyhood, running around outside, taking daredevil risks as he climbs and scrapes his way through the forest landscape, making up his own games, stealing food from the kitchen, are thwarted in the period St Aubyn writes of by his father's indescribable offences against his person which escalate on this particular day to an abuse from which Patrick will never recover.

All of the people depicted in this book (other than Patrick Melrose, and perhaps the American, Anne, who seems to exist in order to provide a cultural counterpoint to the British upper crust) are thoroughly despicable, and they are described doing horrific things: sado-masochism without explicit consent, violent rape, child abuse, paedophilia. Yet once the pull of St Aubyn's narrative current sets in, it is impossible to stop reading about them. This was one of those books that kept me awake after lights-out, hiding like a child again with my book under the bedcovers so as not to disturb Bibliohubby, fighting against fatigue in order to read just one more page, one more page after that, and so on. Extraordinary.

Overall assessment: 4.5 out of 5

Pros / favourite passages: The writing is achingly beautiful, and stands in stark contrast to the dark subjects St Aubyn explores. It is also funny, exhibiting a dry wit peculiar to the English: in describing a school friend's current occupation, David Melrose says he was "a civil servant who was widely thought to be a spy because his job sounded too dull to exist." David himself is described with great subtlety, including observations like this: "To break even the smallest rules by which others convinced themselves that they were behaving correctly gave him great pleasure." And this: "David grinned. He was in the mood for fun. After all, what redeemed life from complete horror was the almost unlimited number of things to be nasty about."

The particular class of people who populate the novel are rendered with great care, not just through physical descriptions but also through the philosophies they espouse: "'What one aims for', said David, 'is ennui.' 'Of course,' said Anne, 'it's more than just French for our old friend boredom. It's boredom plus money, or boredom plus arrogance. It's I-find-everything-boring, therefore I'm fascinating.'" And from David's wife: "Eleanor still found it inexplicable that the best English manners contained such a high proportion of outright rudeness and gladiatorial combat. She knew that David abused this licence, but she also knew how 'boring' it was to interfere with the exercise of unkindness."

David justifies to himself his cruel and inhumane treatment of Patrick by the viewpoint he expresses in a conversation over dinner: "The proposition I want to make, is that education should be something of which a child can later say: if I survived that, I can survive anything." His friend Nicholas later chimes in: "I may be a frightful reactionary, but I think that all you have to do for children is hire a reasonable nanny and put them down for Eaton."

These views are beautifully borne out by the fact that we as readers know that while this conversation is occurring, poor little five year old Patrick is sitting miserably on the stairs, waiting for his mother to come and comfort him after having lived the worst day in his young life. But she never does come.

After reading this book I held Iggy closer and cuddled him tighter, and was reluctant to let go of him even so that he could sleep in his own bed. What a devastation it is when love is withheld from a child, and what an inevitability it surely is when that child subsequently grows to become an adult who is capable of living only on the very edges of society.

Cons: I am hard-pressed to find them, though I have given this just shy of 5 stars because its subject matter is so very dark. I was left after reading this feeling shell-shocked, and now that I have read the second one too, that feeling is only enhanced.