Mother's Milk
Edward St Aubyn
2006 Nominee
Man Booker Prize
12 April 2012
9781447203025288 pages
Synopsis
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Mother's Milk is the fourth of Edward St Aubyn's semi-autobiographical Patrick Melrose novels, adapted for TV for Sky Atlantic and starring Benedict Cumberbatch as aristocratic addict, Patrick.
The once illustrious, once wealthy Melroses are in peril. Caught up in the wreckage of broken promises, child-rearing, adultery and assisted suicide, Patrick finds his wife Mary consumed by motherhood, his mother in thrall to a New Age foundation, and his young son Robert understanding far more than he should. But even as the family struggles against the pull of its ever-present past, a new generation brings a new tenderness, and the possibility of change.
‘So good – so fantastically well written, profound and humane . . . it is heartstopping’ Rachel Cooke, Observer
‘The Melrose sequence is now clearly one of the major achievements of contemporary British fiction’ Evening Standard
'The Melrose novels are a masterwork for the twenty-first century' Alice Sebold
