Some Hope: A Trilogy. Edward St Aubyn

We are following Patrick Melrose who is going back to his old world, the world of aristocrati full of intrigues and gossip.

I'm not a quitter and although I disliked Bad News, the second of the Patrick Melrose Novels, I read Some Hope. I liked it. St. Aubyn, as usual, is extremely witty and although most of the characters continue to be a rather distasteful lot, they are laughable. If you liked the first of the five, this is worth the read.

I ordered this paperback in error, thinking it was the trilogy. I then ordered all 5 Patrick Melrose Novels on my Kindle.It really has to be read as one book. The writing is superb, funny and heartbreaking, with a deliciously waspish edge.I don't know how to describe a story that encompasses generations, class, addiction - in other words - life.

It will have to be enough that this book gave its reader that too-rare experience of reading something very well written. Fine writing!

Really enjoyed this novel, despite the darkness. I found Patrick Melrose quite likeable by the third part of this book. Looking forward to reading the next volume.Don't understand why anyone woud dislike the book purely because the protagonists are wealthy,

Some Hope suffers from great expectations (mine), which perhaps isn't fair. Of course, it should be judged on its own, as a distinct story and not compared to previous installments. It's quite dazzling as such. Edward St. Aubyn's writing is crisp, engaging and hilariously critical. Of this satiric genre, Some Hope may be the best thing to come along since Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh chronicled England's U's and Hons. There's a carve up of Princess Margaret that Jonathan Swift would envy. Unfortunately, having read the searingly painful experiences of younger Patrick, I couldn't help but feel a disconnect. Pleased of course the sweet boy and poor young man I'd come to care about survived abuse and addiction. Terribly sad he's is a snotty English toff adrift, who now sober is keenly aware of the irony of his circumstances.I enjoyed meeting Johnny Hall, Patrick's erstwhile addict in arms (with collapsing veins) and other characters who trickle in from Never Mind and Bad News. Now a quarter century since our first encounter, I suppose it is too much to ask that PM be anything but damaged goods. It is disturbing when someone you care so much about is so much less than you hope for--however realistic. I was reminded of Woolf's To The Lighthouse the novella wherein we meet a character version of her brother as a young boy (delightful and endearing) and as an adult (smug and offensive). Some Hope has that shock of authenticity and a sense of sadness or loss. There's a terrifically insightful passage about how the curse of therapeutically "talking it out" keeps one tethered to the abuse and act, forever frozen in time, never moving past it. As I type this I wonder if in fact I am far too hard on the hero and author, and should just be glad he's alive to sort stuff out in the years to come. This book is the interregnum or bridge to where we're headed.Once again, St. Aubyn does a spectacular job of distilling down both time and narrative to the bare, poetic essentials (I keep thinking StA would be a great poet). In Some Hope the focus just before, during and after an "important" party in the country. Hilariously, the guest of honor is the former Princess Margaret, a lush of the first order, and one who could probably match Patrick Melrose's penchant for over-indulgence and addiction. It's these flourishes that distinguish St. Aubyn's writing from lesser mortals along with brilliant and insightful prose: Here's a favorite passage: 'Why did he muzzle new feelings with old [critical] habits of speech? It might not have been obvious to anyone else, but he longed to stop thinking about himself, to stop strip-mining his memories, to stop the introspective and retrospective drift of his thoughts...above all he wanted to stop being a child without using the cheap disguise of becoming a parent." Another great read.

Volume Three of the Patrick Melrose novels is not so good as the first two, but is a bit of a happier book. The fire has gone out of the satire, that at least not as thoroughgoing, probably because Patrick's hatred of his father is not so unremitting as formerly. He is a bit older, more introspective, also with a wider knowledge of the world. Patrick is obviously trying to work out his relationship with his some years dead father, telling his good friend Johnny Holliday about the abuse, even if words eventually fail him.The canvas is broader, not so concentrated. Patrick and many other denizens of the idle rich class in London are off to a house part in the country, special guest, Her Royal Highness, Princess Margaret. The portrait of the poor Princess, now many years dead is as unkind as it is breathtakingly funny. It is the key feature of the book, other than the very graceful ending, where we see Patrick coming into some adult perceptions. The title is very well chosen.Interestingly enough, while the book is not nearly as successful as the first two volumes, there are glimmers here of a major literary talent, and in a very different, more universal mode than Evelyn Waugh. In this book, St. Aubyn gives promise of being a very good novelist indeed.

"Some Hope" is the third part of The Patrick Melrose Trilogy, the first two parts being "Never Mind" and the second "Bad News". When we first meet Patrick in "Never Mind" he is five years old, living in the South of France with his cruel and spiteful father and his alcoholic mother. In "Bad News" Patrick is twenty two and a hopeless drug addict, and the book is set during a weekend in New York when Patrick goes to collect his fathers ashes.In this third book, "Some Hope", Patrick is now thirty. Having spent years suffering from drug addiction, he is now clean, but has no career (despite a sudden and disturbing need to obtain an income) and has split from the girl he was supposed to marry. The three books together are excellent and you will rarely find better writing anywhere or from anyone. This, third volume, takes place before and during a party and contains many characters that have appeared in the previous two books (they should be read in order preferably, in order to make sense).The cast of snobbish and unbearable characters all converging on a country house, in which Princess Margaret is the guest of honour, coincides with Patrick's attempt to make sense of his life so far and to make peace with the memory of his father. The prose is exquisite and, although most of the characters are thoroughly unpleasant and often downright nasty, you find that you care what happens to Patrick Melrose and what will become of him. The sense of elitism from a less likeable group of people is hard to imagine and the thought of having to suffer such unbearable company would make anyone grateful they had no links to the aristocracy! For those interested, there are two further volumes, Mother's Milk and At Last.

This book really is a tour de force - beautifully written.But I am with Holden Caulfield: "What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though...You take that book Of Human Bondage, by Somerset Maugham... I read it last summer. It's a pretty good book and all, but I wouldn't want to call Somerset Maugham up. I don't know, he just isn't the kind of guy I'd want to call up, that's all."And I feel the same about Edward St Aubyn.

I've read all of them. Not much got done around the house for a week or two.I re-read passages several times over, sometimes out loud.I'll probably read them all again.

Edward St Aubyn writes beautifully. The characters in SOME HOPE - wealthy, highborn or both - are all more or less repellent. But, as they build up to attending an ostentatiously lavish party, the author's skill as a satirist - and the barbed dialogue he puts into their mouths - makes the reader actually care about what happens to them. Very classy (in every sense).

I have really enjoyed this series with an excellent set of characters hiding adware secret. Each books centre on a specific event in the main character's life but it is the entertaining set of characters which populate these events which makes the books so excellent and enjoyable. The dinner party with Princess Margaret is a joy.