Never Mind

Winner of the Betty Trask Award, Never Mind is the first in Edward St Aubyn's semi-autobiographical Patrick Melrose novels.'Perhaps the most brilliant English novelist of his generation' - Alan HollinghurstAt his mother’s family house in the south of France, Patrick Melrose has the run of a magical garden. Bravely imaginative and self-sufficient, five-year-old Patrick encounters the volatile lives of adults with care. His father, David, rules with considered cruelty, and Eleanor, his mother, has retreated into drink. They are expecting guests for dinner. But this afternoon is unlike the chain of summer days before, and the shocking events that precede the guests’ arrival tear Patrick’s world in two.Never Mind was originally published, along with Bad News and Some Hope, as part of a three book omnibus, also called Some Hope.Part of the Picador Collection'At once epic and intimate, appalling and comic, the novels are masterpieces, each and every one’ - Maggie O’FarrellAdapted for TV for Sky Atlantic and starring Benedict Cumberbatch as aristocratic addict, Patrick.

The Melrose sequence is now clearly one of the major achievements of contemporary British fiction. Stingingly well written and exhilaratingly funny, Perhaps the most brilliant English novelist of his generation, St Aubyn puts an entire family under a microscope, laying bare all its painful, unavoidable complexities. At once epic and intimate, appalling and comic, the novels are masterpieces, each and every one, St Aubyn’s prose has an easy charm that masks a ferocious, searching intellect. One of the finest writers of his generation, Nothing about the plots can prepare you for the rich, acerbic comedy of St Aubyn’s world – or more surprising – its philosophical density

Edward St Aubyn's superbly acclaimed Melrose novels are Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, Mother's Milk (shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2006) and At Last. He is also the author of the novels A Clue to the Exit, On the Edge, Lost for Words and Dunbar.