Edward St Aubyn - Mother's Milk

I feel complicated about writing this review. I have had such unadulterated admiration for St Aubyn since I started reading his Patrick Melrose series that I feel guilty for having turned to this fourth volume at a time when I was probably not in the right frame of mind to embrace it. The result, of course, is that I didn't enjoy this book nearly as much as I did the first three parts of the series. So I am willing to give St Aubyn the benefit of the doubt to some extent, by placing some of the blame for my critical reading on my mindset - but not all of it.

In this episode of Patrick's life, he is married, in his 40s, with two young sons. Unlike the first three books in the series, this novel covers more than a 24 hour period, and I believe some of the intensity that has characterised the books to this point is lost as a result. And whilst the series thus far has dealt primarily with Patrick's relationship with his father and the consequences of that relationship on the rest of Patrick's life, the central story of this book revolves around Patrick's relationship with his mother, Eleanor, her physical deterioration and descent into dementia, and the dissolution of Patrick's inheritance (which makes him very angry). St Aubyn illustrates the effect on Patrick of his mother's gradual demise by using a mix of narrative voices, all focused on Patrick and his actions, including Patrick's own first person voice. What is perhaps most jarring - but also most original - is that the book opens with first person narration by Patrick's first-born son, Robert, when he was a baby. And when I say baby, I do truly mean baby - in the first pages, Robert describes, for example, the feeling of being born:

"Why had they pretended to kill him when he was born? Keeping him awake for days, banging his head again and again against a closed cervix; twisting the cord around his throat and throttling him; chomping through his mother's abdomen with cold shears; clamping his head and wrenching his neck from side to side; dragging him out of his hone and hitting him; shining lights in his eyes and doing experiments; taking him away from his mother while she lay on the table, half-dead."

You can see why this highly original opening was difficult for me to read in the last weeks of pregnancy! Obviously this defies any kind of reality, and that's fine - by starting with such a bold example of false narration, St Aubyn signals to his readers that they should not necessarily expect the narrative voices in this book to be true to life. And I accept that. When Robert later makes astute observations that are easily beyond the wit of most well educated adults, a reader is capable of accepting this because the framework has been set up from the beginning - but as with all books that require such a suspension of disbelief, it must be executed with consistency. That consistency is missing here, and this is where I believe St Aubyn fails - or at least it is where he lost me. I couldn't accept that a child narrator who, on the one hand, is able to assert during the family's trip to America that French Fries should now be called Freedom Fries (and understands the political reason for this), who is aware when his father ruminates in front of him that "[Robert] wasn't being communicated with, but allowed to listen to his father practising speeches", and who has remarkable insight into human relationships - would also, on the other hand, behave like a young child and ask exactly the kinds of questions that one would expect of children in a new country ("why do the pavements glitter?"). As far as I was able to tell (given that my reading of this book, like my writing of this review, was punctuated by a toddler climbing all over me and a baby crying to be fed), Robert was aged between six and nine for most of the book.

A few other inconsistencies also crept into the text of Mother's Milk. The book is written with little regard for the existence of the previous volumes in the series. Patrick drinks heavily but makes no reference to his previous addiction. Indeed, his years of severe addiction are not referred to at all, which beggars belief in a novel that deals so personally with Patrick as a protagonist. I am no expert, but I would have thought it would be fairly problematic for a former drug addict to develop an addiction to another substance later in life - I would have thought the latter would raise all kinds of alarm bells in light of the former. I would particularly have thought that the visit of Patrick's friend Johnny, who was his partner in crime during much of his earlier substance abuse, would have raised a comment or two about their wilder days and their lucky escape from an early end. But no such comments were made, even while the two shared intimate conversation and a bottle or two of wine.

And in the penultimate sequence of the novel, Patrick's family takes a trip to America - yet his earlier time in New York City, where most of the second novel of the series, Bad News, is set, is not referenced once. In fact, the holiday is written in such a way that it could well be Patrick's first ever visit to the United States. Facts and oddities about the United States are shared as though the whole family was observing these as newcomers to the country.

A raft of inconsistencies indeed. So obvious did I find these that I wondered whether they were deliberate. Perhaps St Aubyn wanted this book to stand on its own? Certainly it does so successfully - this book alone, out of the Patrick Melrose novels, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. And I suppose I was more attuned to notice such things than most readers, having read the first four books of the pentalogy in quick succession rather than as they were published, with a year or more in between. Maybe for other readers these things don't matter so much.

More troublesome for me than the inconsistencies, however, was Patrick's character. In book one, Never Mind, Patrick as a five year old child is endearing and pitiful, drawing heavily on the sympathy of the readers. For that reason, we forgive him for his behaviour in book two, Bad News - particularly as Patrick's horrid conduct in that book is fuelled in equal measure by his hatred for his father and a vitriolic self-hatred. By the end of book three, Some Hope, what we are left feeling is that there is indeed hope for Patrick - he has started to redeem himself, and for the first time I found myself liking him. So it was a huge disappointment in Mother's Milk, when one might assume that Patrick's redemption has well and truly arrived - marriage, fatherhood - to find him as an embittered, nasty middle-aged man engaged in casual adultery.

As I stated at the outset of this review, I did read this book at an unfortunate time. Late pregnancy and the first few sleep-deprived weeks with a newborn are not the ideal time to read a book dense with rich language and heavy on the darker side of cynicism. I read this very slowly. Once things had calmed down at home, I re-dedicated myself to the task of finishing Mother's Milk, and I must say that my enjoyment of it increased thereafter. It became clear to me, for example, that Patrick's adultery is a product of his wife's total absorption with motherhood - something that is claimed by Patrick throughout the book, but which at first I took to be merely an excuse. Early on, Patrick says that in picking a wife he was so concerned about choosing someone who would be a good mother to his children that he had neglected to find someone who would be able to juggle that task with continuing to be a good partner to him. And certainly one of his redeeming features here is his determination to be a good father, or at least to ensure that his children lead reasonably good lives - although St Aubyn doesn't portray him with any warmth, and we don't see him engaged in fatherly activities like tossing a ball around with his sons. His fatherhood mission is illustrated more cerebrally. Towards the end, for example, he says that he was obsessed with "stopping the flow of poison from one generation to the next, but he already felt that he had failed." Patrick is far from perfect, but his motivations are not without some merit.

Overall assessment: 3 out of 5.

Pros: As always, St Aubyn's language is impeccable. In spite of my reservations regarding inconsistency and character, I have found myself recalling parts of the novel after putting it down, and calling up quotes in my mind. The interminably sad portrait of Eleanor, Patrick's mother, will stay with me, I think (though I'm not sure that's a good thing!). And this book probably suffers from its necessary comparison with those that came before. I'm surprised that this is the one which was shortlisted for such a prestigious prize, but I am not surprised that, on its own, it was regarded so highly.

Cons: See above re inconsistency and cynicism.