It is impossible to read Edward St. Aubyn and not think of Evelyn Waugh, but at the beginning of this project to re-read four of the five Patrick Melrose novels in preparation for the finale, the differences become more apparent. The snobbishness and cruelty of Waugh's characters was often light-hearted; St. Aubyn's people are more apt to be empty sadists. It's hard to blame the author for this; he is merely capturing his coarser world. As a stylist, St. Aubyn has a way with similes and metaphors such that the reader doesn't even mind when they're gratuitous ("The curtains billowed feebly and collapsed again, like defeated lungs"). The five-year-old Patrick Melrose of this novel is already damaged goods, with a wrecked mother and monstrous father. Waugh had God to provide an affirmative flame; what will St. Aubyn do?
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