The final novel in this series by Man Booker short-listed Edward St Aubyn will be published by Picador on May 6.
Raped repeatedly from the age of 5 by his sadistic and psychopathic father, St Aubyn was a heroin addict by the age of 16. For him drugs offered the perfect half way house between living and suicide. With feelings, thoughts and memories that at the time he could not tolerate, St Aubyn believes that using drugs saved his life.
St Aubyn had always wanted to write. He told Evening Standard reporter David Sexton I always identified writing with some kind of liberation, some kind of redemption. After the death of his father St Aubyn sat down to write, although it took him a year to continue beyond the first line, so traumatic did he find the process. Never Mind, Bad News and Some Hope all followed. In 2006 in Mother’s Milk, the main protagonist Patrick starts to “talk it out”. By this time he is married with two charming small boys, although he himself is drunken, miserable and unfaithful. The final book in the series, focused on Patrick’s mother’s funeral, will be published this week.
Sexton notes how St Aubyn’s novels take child abuse in an upper-class milieu and turns it into a form of truth-telling for everybody with the questions it poses: how did we come to be as we are? is there any room for manoeuvre? can we be free? They work, he says, because they are so singingly well written and exhilaratingly funny.
David Sexton’s interview is at https://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/article-23944381-edward-st-aubyn-is-getting-used-to-happiness.dohttps://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/article-23944381-edward-st-aubyn-is-getting-used-to-happiness.do
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