Volume four of the Melrose series finds a whining and adulterous Patrick "obsessed with stopping the flow of poison from one generation to the next." His mother is being swindled out of her French summer home by a meditation guru; his wife is solely devoted to mothering their two boys, Robert and Thomas; and he himself seems to suffer from a locked-in syndrome in which every thought, desire, or deed is the entryway to a mental labyrinth that causes only torment. Waugh's people displayed an admirable stoicism and equanimity in the face of crisis. Patrick Melrose derides the New Age charlatan who has taken his family home, but he has more in common with the navel-gazers than he thinks.
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