Customer Reviews

Mother's Milk: A Novel

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Edward St. Aubyn's thin novel (235 pages) makes up in acidity for what it lacks in length. It's all about Patrick Melrose, an attorney in his early forties; his wife Mary; and their two precocious sons Robert and Thomas. The clever title has to do literally with Mary's actually breast-feeding both her sons but it also refers to Patrick's often strained relationship with his unraveling aged mother who gives away the family home in the South of France to a New Age guru Seamus Dourke. The author throws in some adultery, thoughts of assisted suicide, the plight of the institutionalized old people and dysfunctional families in general. The action takes place in four Augusts from 2000 to 2003.

What is so exciting about this little novel is its very dry wit, seen most often in the character of Patrick. He calls his wife Mary and himself trainee parents. He opines that newborn babies "can't sweat, can't walk, can't talk, can't read, can't drive, can't sign a check." They are unlike horses who can stand a few hours after they are born. "'If horses went in for banking, they'd have a credit line by the end of the week.'" And sometimes a woman is just a woman "before you light her up."

The author reserves his most biting satire, however, for these United States. Having lost the ancestral home in the South of France, the Melrose family travels to America. While their plane is still on the ground at Heathrow, they spot a woman "sagging at the knees under her own weight." Like many Americans, they are so fat that they have "decided to become their own air-bag systems in a dangerous world." Patrick says he will call himself an "'international tourist on the grounds that that was how President Bush pronounced 'international terrorist.'" Finally there is much ado about the awfulness of American cuisine. The Melroses discover that french fries are not called "freedom fries" on a menu. Patrick decides that is is probably easier to write "God Bless Our Troops" than to reprint the menus. At the Better Latte Than Never coffee shop the waiter tells Patrick to "have a great one!" He sees that as as "hyperinflation" of "have a nice day." Patrick then goes on a tear, suggesting "Have a blissful one." "'You all make sure you have an all-body orgasm,' he whispered in a Southern accent, 'and make it last.' Because you deserve it. . . In the end, there was only so much you could expect from a cup of coffee and an uneatable muffin." Goodness knows that American road food is an easy target for satire. We all can tell horror stories of inedible U. S. restaurant offerings. One has to wonder, however, if this writer has ever tasted victuals in his own country. The only decent food I ever ate in England was in an Indian restaurant.

One feels St. Aubyn could dive into a sewer, rummage around in the muck and emerge in a freshly pressed dinner suit with a boutonniere in bloom, smelling of cedar and roses and smiling like a shark. He creates believable characters from a once-priviliged family-in-decline and depicts the world-weary grittiness of the protagonist in crisp, elegant language with a style that is direct and light as a feather. Superbly crafted in the manner of the stories in his earlier book, "Some Hope."

It is odd perhaps that I would describe this short novel as a "slog," but there it is. While reading it, I spent a lot of time complaining to family and friends about the hateful, annoying novel I was reading. It started out particularly bad. The first section is written from the perspective of the family's five year old. I have to say, I really don't think this guy can write kids, or maybe he was trying to imagine what it would be like to describe the thoughts of a child in very adult language - I dunno. All I can say is it was excessively annoying.

Things get a little better when the perspectives of the adults take over, particularly the pathetic and eternally unsatisfied father and husband, Patrick. Now, I will be honest. What really got to me about this novel is its unrelenting cynicism. I know that other reviewers describe this as 'acerbic wit,' but for me it was just too much. Each and every character is loathesome. Each and every aspect of their lives is a bore and a chore. Now I am a single woman, so I guess I might have to admit that reading about the discontents of married people brings some amount of satisfaction. And in fact, Patrick could be quite amusing in his rants and raves (there were probably not enough of these). Also, I should add that NO ONE dislikes excessive earnestness more than me, but this novel, as I said, was unrelenting. And do I really need to hear multiple descriptions of how disgusting fat people are? I mean, that just comes off as snobbish and unkind, not really witty. And who can't find something good to eat in New York??

As many times as I was tempted to put down this book forever, I didn't - mainly because I have a compulsion that does not allow me to stop reading a book early. But despite this, the book did win me over in a certain way, and its author is a skilled writer, even if he sees no goodness in life, love, family, or any of New York's myriad restaurants. My advice to you? If I were being honest I would say - life is short, go read the Iliad or something. But if you dislike your spouse and regret having children and really hate your mother, you might enjoy it!

When a novel opens with a scene in the delivery room narrated from the point of the view of the baby himself, you know the author has either a knack for unusual perspective or else a tendency to be cute. Edward St. Aubyn teeters on the verge of cuteness for about six pages, then finds his stride in an acerbic view of family life as seen from the inside. The use of a child (Robert, now a precocious six-year-old) as quasi-narrator provides a rich vein of comedy, as he can report the actions of his elders without fully understanding them, making the first quarter of the book extremely funny.

But then the point of view changes to that of Robert's father, Philip Melrose, a forty-something London barrister entering a mid-life crisis with the birth of his second son and his wife's almost total absorption in her children. As he takes refuge in adultery and alcohol, the book is not funny any more, but moves into weightier matters. The third quarter, a year later, focuses on Mary, the wife and mother; the more subtle feminine perspective is welcome, but it is not penetrating enough to balance the sharper emotions of the other sections.

The first three parts of the book take place at yearly intervals in the South of France, where the family come to spend August on the estate of Philip's mother, Eleanor. But Eleanor, now hospitalized after a series of strokes, has given the property away to a New Age cult, and the Melroses visit only on sufferance. Their fourth August is spent in America, where various more distant relatives have managed to retain rather more of their ancestral wealth. But though the Provencal estate may have gone, the problem of Eleanor's care remains, adding a further strain to a family already close to breaking point.

The novel was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker prize (eventually won by Kiran Desai's THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS; it was a poor year). For the first 75 pages, you can easily see the reason for the nomination, but thereafter it becomes clear why it didn't ultimately win. The book has a curiously dated air, with cultural assumptions belonging more to the nineties or even the eighties than the first decade of the 21st century. Even when it moves to America, the targets are either familiar (motel bathrooms "sanitized for your protection") or too easy (post-9/11 patriotic paranoia). But the biggest problem is that although there are signs of a possible easing of the downward emotional trajectory towards the end, it moves into depressing territory that cannot be lightened by the occasional flashes of humor -- and the ending, which I think is meant to offer hope, instead seems merely nihilistic.

In his impressive novel SOME HOPE, St. Aubyn's shows a young Patrick Melrose trying to cope with the actions and legacy of his repellent and snobbish father. In MOTHER'S MILK, the sequel, St. Aubyn shows Patrick, now in his forties, trying to cope with two mothers--Eleanor, his own mother, who is lingering pathetically in a nursing home, and Mary, his wife and the mother of his two young sons.

St. Aubyn has crafted these very different mothers so that they have equivalent effects on Patrick. Here, the young and middlle-aged Eleanor filled her life with altruistic pursuits, ignoring her son. In contrast, Mary's altruistic and all-consuming activity is motherhood, which once again leads to the abandonment of Patrick.

In examining Patrick and these two mothers, St. Aubyn shows considerable skills as a stylist and novelist. The skills show to their best when a character is in contemplative mode--say, the frustrated and lonely Patrick drinking at the beach or Mary with a few precious moments to herself as her demanding younger son naps. This is what I mean:

"She sometimes felt she was about to forget her own existence completely. She had to cry to reclaim herself. People who didn't understand thought that her tears were the product of a long suppressed and mundane catastrophe, her terminal exhaustion, her huge overdraft or her unfaithful husband, but they were in fact a crash course in the necessary egotism of someone who needed to get a self back in order to sacrifice it once again."

At the same time, the ability to make such observations causes occasional lapses. These are most apparent in numerous conversations, unreal in their articulateness, or in the renderings of children and their profound awareness. In both cases, these read as if St. Aubyn just couldn't pass up making a brilliant or exquisite remark. These are lapses in discipline, not control, and turn St. Aubyn's articulateness against the quality of his work.

Regardless, there is much pleasure to be found in this extremely well written novel.

The British love writing about dysfunctional families - there are dozens of good literary novels published each year about them - and if not for the fact that Edward St. Aubyn's book was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize, it wouldn't have stood out as an obvious pick The secret torments of the Melroses aren't particularly exceptional or interesting. Fact is, they're all a little messed up in the head because they had dads or mums who didn't do the right thing by them when they were little. By implication, their own kids will some day grow up similarly afflicted. The problem with reading books like these is that with somebody - a parent or better still, society at large- to blame, we are encouraged not to take responsibility for our own actions. And so it goes on.





Be that as it may, "Mother's Milk" is indeed a very well written book. We dwell in the heads of each character merry-go-round style and let their interior monologue reveal their inner most feelings and frustrations to us. Of the lot, I found Mary's voice the most sympathetic and truest. A woman fighting a losing battle against the demands of motherhood is universal and a phenomenon most people can identify with. However, Patrick's spiraling resentment at losing his place in Mary's bed to his kids, his mother Eleanor's bizarre determination to disinherit him and leave her property to some New Age cause, his descent into self-pity and response by mooning about, getting drunk on the beach and making out with his friend Julia, etc only seems like childish petulance and grows increasingly tiresome. I also had problems with the voices of the two boys, Robert and Thomas - they're far too old for their ages and therefore lack credibility. Kettle, Mary's high society mother may seem like an obvious caricature but she's believable and explains Mary's obsession with becoming everything she's not. Even poor Eleanor's crankiness may be explained by her own past. The best part of the book for me was Chapter 4 - about the family's never again holiday with Josh Packer and his posh family - the antics of these nouveau riche are a scream !





If you're into books of this genre, you will enjoy "Mother's Milk". If not, there's nothing too special here that should make this a must-read. If only the Man Booker Prize nominating committee would be more daring in its choice of new titles for the award. I haven't read it yet but fellow nominee M J Hyland's "Carry Me Down" promises to be another one from this same genre.

THis is one of the most over intellectualized look at parenting I've ever read. It's as if the couple's first child is born an intellectual, and both mom and dad spend so much time reflecting and intellectualizing everything, it's incredible. I thought I would dislike it but I actually found it amusing, in a weird way. I give the author the benefit of the doubt that he intentionally overintellectualizes the parents to exagerate the type of parenting where each and every need of the child is central (particularly for the mom in this novel). The mom drove me nuts--she basically has no self. But, she recognizes this but can't stop it. Dad is an alcoholic intellectual with a crazy mother who he can't seem to separate from. The plot twists sound familiar but the writing is different enough that it sticks with you.

The pitch of the writing in this novel is consistently jaw dropping from the first page to the last. It is both chillingly bleak and reassuringly humane. St. Aubyn manages to to appear unadorned while pulling of breath-taking literary feats at will. The fact that the account of child-birth, from a baby's eye view, on the first page doesn't clang in the least tells you a lot about the audacity and skill of this writer. Swoon inducing, heartfelt yet hysterically funny writing. The best and most satisfying novel I've read for years.

This unique novel centers on Patrick Melrose, a London barrister, with a wife and two young sons. Patrick remains subject to the whims of his senile mother, who has converted Patrick's childhood home into a New Age retreat. Narrated by turns from the perspectives of Patrick, his wife, and their elder son, the novel vividly captures how the family members' roles shift with the birth of the second son and the deterioration of Patrick's mother. I enjoyed the shifting viewpoints and voices. The book starts particularly strong but devolves to be somewhat unbelievable and tedious by the end.

This is a very unique & explicit exploration of familial relationships which although dark & poisonous at times rings very true & hilariously funny thanks to the authentic voices of its characters.

The author is incredibly attuned to feelings & is able to convey the inner workings of each characters mind with such astuteness that you feel they are sharing their deepest darkest secrets with you as their only confidente.

It does end a little abruptly but given that it is such an original & entertaining read I did not hold it against the author ;o)