20-04-2025
Love the Melrose novels? Things have gone downhill
The Patrick Melrose sequence, by Edward St Aubyn, comprises five autobiographical novels, including the Booker-shortlisted Mother's Milk (2005). They document Melrose's trajectory from a wretched upper-class childhood, in which he's sexually abused by his father, through heroin addiction and, eventually, a hard-won redemption. The destructiveness of Melrose's parents, and his unlikely survival, trace British society's change in attitude, over the 20th century, from repression and oppression to liberalism.
Savage, hilarious, glittering and tragic, these novels rank among the finest fiction of the past decades. In their fascination with torment, class and style, they're our closest contemporary equivalent to the work of Anthony Powell. There are, however, two St Aubyns. He can just as readily resemble Simon Raven, whose novels of upper-middle class life range from the slightly sparkling to the flat. Whether we get St Aubyn on Powellian or Ravenesque form, in my experience, depends on whether Patrick Melrose is involved. And in Parallel Lines, unfortunately, he is not.
What one wants from a St Aubyn novel is, at the very least, a coke-snorting, Baudelaire-reading duke, who'll stub out a cigarette on a waiter before being sick in a gutter. But Parallel Lines is a sequel to 2021's Double Blind, which followed Lucy and Olivia, friends from the University of Oxford, as they navigated the world of high finance. The large cast of characters here, most of whom we've met before, ranges from high to low society, and none of them is badly behaved.
Instead, St Aubyn's focus is on family. Olivia's husband is Francis, a worthy man who toils for an environmental charity, and they have a small son, Noah. Events revolve about the psychological problems of Sebastian, Olivia's twin brother, from whom she was separated at birth. She thrived in comfort; he was abused by their father and beset by psychosis. While their names immediately hint at Twelfth Night, there are no further Shakespearean resonances, bar the novel's general movement towards reunification.
This, unfortunately, is typical. St Aubyn dips in and out of his characters' viewpoints somewhat randomly. A Catholic priest pops up, meditates, then vanishes. The plot is minimal, hinging on Olivia's adoptive father, who's also Sebastian's psychiatrist. He doesn't want them to meet for ethical reasons: hardly a powerful enough force to control a novel. The social chasm between Olivia and Sebastian is barely explored. The most convincing emotional thread concerns Olivia and Francis's tenderness towards Noah, but other characters are under-developed: Lucy suffers from a brain tumour, and her travails feel like an afterthought.
It's clear, at least, that St Aubyn is fond of Sebastian. The latter's rehabilitation gives the novel its principal arc, and its best writing. When another patient stabs himself in the chest with a knife, believing that this action will open a portal to Japan, Sebastian muses: 'The doctors didn't understand what was going on at all and were treating him like some random loony who had stabbed himself in the chest.' Such mordant humour abounds. Still, nothing cuts too deeply, and you quickly begin to notice that everyone talks in this mannered way. One cameo character quips: 'Her pearls may have been cultured… but she most definitely was not.' That may sound clever, but isn't buying cultured pearls exactly what uncultured people do?
The subject matter hums with wasted potential. Climate-change activists, high finance, modern art and cryogenics are on display. But wherever you expect St Aubyn to land a hit, he veers away. Francis has built an ark in his garden, in preparation for the day the waters rise. This would have engendered a withering putdown from a Melrose character; here, it doesn't cause an eyebrow to lift.
Parallel Lines is underscored with gratitude for a happy family life, and for divisions healed – and that's all fair enough. Yes, contentment can forge good fiction. But how I longed for someone to puncture all the affectations, then pass out, cocktail in hand, on a nearby chaise longue. Let's hope St Aubyn gives Melrose another chance before too long.
