Edward St Aubyn

[WICKES]

Is anyone familiar with this writer? St Aubyn is an English author, born into the aristocracy (his family came over with the Norman army and have lived in the same area of England for 1000 years!) who has been compared to Evelyn Waugh and Oscar Wilde. In the few interviews I have seen he appears and speaks exactly as you would expect, in fact he is pretty much the stereotypical British aristocrat: tall, striking, all sang froid, charm and calm, measured eloquence. But his childhood was far from calm. His father was a sadistic monster, clearly mentally ill, maybe even a psychopath. He raped and tortured Edward St Aubyn when he was a little boy and even boasted of once killing a man during a hunting expedition. St Aubyn predictably went on to suffer terrible depression, alcoholism and drug addiction (he turned up for his final exams at Oxford with a pen containing heroin). In a radio interview he said that when he decided to write about his life he made a pact that if the writings were no good he would commit suicide. What he came up with was the Melrose series. The 'Melrose' novels are about the life of Patrick Melrose (St Aubyn himself), an English aristocrat who descends into a hell of drink and drugs to blot out the memory of childhood sexual abuse. The bits I have read and heard impressed me very much- the prose is beautiful and he has a real gift for sparkling, witty, sharp dialogue. He is in the British tradition of upper class/ aristocratic novels (Anthony Powell, Oscar Wilde, Evelyn Waugh, Wodehouse, the early Huxley etc), but there is obviously a savage darkness and cruelty at the heart of his fictional world.

I have a friend who reveres him and regards him as the best living novelist in the British isles. Is that going too far?

[ennison]

I am going to binge on St Aubyn this coming year, all going well.