Edward St. Aubyn-At Last

Perhaps it was the aspect of this novel that I enjoyed the most that ended up putting me off. St. Aubyn is a veddy British author and his characters speak wonderfully but also have that snarky, wiseass attitude that makes so many Brits seem to put on airs. In this novel it is an uncle, Nicholas, who sounds like the latest incarnation of Oscar Wilde but the entire atmosphere is one of emotional removal or escape from each other and it gets cloying after a bit. For fans of St. Aubyn, this is the last of the Melrose novels, so-called for Patrick Melrose who is the central character. His mother has died, unregrettably as far as he is concerned, for she has treated him shabbily, but everybody else seems to like her since she was beneficent to them. A gathering for a funeral is an excellent occasion for snarkiness, of course, and St. Aubyn’s characters certainly don’t hold back. Perhaps it would have helped if I had read the first two in the series, but my test for the success of a trilogy or series is how well each individual book stands up on its own. By that test, this one fails.