Never Mind by Edward St. Aubyn
The first of five novels in Edward St. Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose series is a glimpse into the protagonist’s childhood. The entire novel takes place on or around the Melrose family estate in the South of France, on a single day when Patrick is just five years old.
Patrick is an outside observer to most of the story, which centers around the intersection of three deeply troubled couples. Each of these couples is connected to English High Society, but no one is entirely comfortable with their status in it.
Patrick’s parents, David and Eleanore Melrose, are at the top of the small societal heap of the novel. David, a failed classically trained pianist, married Eleanore solely for her money and has spent the better part of his life using his vast wealth and free time to manipulate and dominate others. He is a sociopath in every sense of the word and his emotional and physical abuse of his wife are presented in the terrifying emotional climaxes of the novel. Eleanore has been driven to hardcore alcoholism and prescription drug abuse in order to escape both the boredom of aristocratic life and the paranoia of life with David. Young Patrick’s response to his unorthodox (or super-orthodox, depending on your perspective) upbringing will presumably be covered in depth in the later novels.
The Melrose’s neighbors, Anne and Viktor, come not from the landed aristocracy but from the distant worlds of middle America and Continental academia, respectively. Viktor seeks desperately the approval of David Melrose and the high society he represents, but David takes perverse pleasure in watching Viktor flounder in his attempts at proper and posh behavior. Anne is the only character who seems to recognize the absurdity of it all, and suffers greatly over “those interminable weekends” during which Viktor drags her from famous house to famous house, society party to society party, all the time scolding her for her lack of decorum even as his benefactors mock him relentlessly for his own ignorance of mannered behavior.
Finally, David’s young protege Nicholas and his latest sexual infatuation, Bridget, round out the little group of the novel. They provide much of the comic relief in the book — a novel which is surprisingly, memorably funny even as it delves into shocking behaviors and desperate ennui. Aubyn deftly drifts between the inner lives of each character, giving rise to one of the most hilarious passages in which Bridget and Nicholas’ mismatched affections are revealed. Bridget clearly thinks she has the upper hand:
In the end she would probably marry him and she would be the fourth Lady Pratt. Then she would divorce him and get half a million pounds, or whatever, and keep Barry as her sex slave and still call herself Lady Pratt in shops. God, sometimes she was so cynical it was frightening.
Of course, Nicholas has other plans: “If he married again, he would not choose a girl like Bridget. Apart from anything else, she was completely ignorant.”
While one is tempted to read the book as a commentary on the decline of the once great British aristocracy, St. Aubyn reminds us that a tendency towards darkness and wickedness bred of boredom have been features of the powerful classes since time immemorial. A thematic element that recurs again and again is Suitonius’ The Twelve Caesars, a favorite of David Melrose. In particular, the chapters on Nero and Caligula are treated in depth, and the comparison drawn between David’s sadistic streak and the behavior of those most vile of Roman emperors.
The book concludes with the three couples sitting down to an uncomfortable dinner, in which the various philosophical themes of the novel are discussed outright by the characters. Victor notes that “Ethics is not the study of what we do…but what we ought to do,” and a considerable amount of time is then spent on the topic of how one “ought” to raise a child. David and Nicholas share the opinion that “[I]t doesn’t do the child any good to be mollycoddled…all you have to do for children is hire a reasonable nanny and put them down for Eton.” Meanwhile, Patrick listens to all this from the stop of the stairs, still wondering what he has done to so often provoke his father’s horrible wrath…and the reader wonders what Patrick will do in future volumes to recover from it.
A novel of incredible lyricism, poignant commentary, with a cast of characters who repulse and compel at once, this is the rare contemporary literary novel that grabs the reader and really throttles them. Highly recommended.
