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Edward St. Aubyn

At Last

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Now a 5-Part Limited Event Series on Showtime, Starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Blythe Danner
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year • One of TIME's Top 10 Fiction Books of the Year • Named One of the best books of the Year by The Telegraph and Esquire
Here, from the writer described by The Guardian as “our purest living prose stylist” and whom Alan Hollinghurst has called “the most brilliant English novelist of his generation,” is a work of glittering social comedy, profound emotional truth, and acute verbal wit. At Last is also the stunning culmination of one of the great fiction enterprises of the past two decades in the life of the English novel.
As readers of Edward St. Aubyn's extraordinary earlier works—Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and the Man Booker Prize finalist Mother's Milk—are well aware, for Patrick Melrose, “family” has always been a double-edged sword. At Last begins as friends, relatives, and foes trickle in to pay final respects to his mother, Eleanor. An American heiress, Eleanor married into the British aristocracy, giving up the grandeur of her upbringing for “good works” freely bestowed on everyone but her own son, who finds himself questioning whether his transition to a life without parents will indeed be the liberation he had so long imagined.
The service ends, and family and friends gather for a final party. Amid the social niceties and social horrors, Patrick begins to sense the prospect of release from the extremes of his childhood, and at the end of the day, alone in his room, the promise some form of safety…at last.
This book is currently unavailable
198 printed pages
Original publication
2018
Publication year
2018
Publisher
Picador
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Impressions

  • Annete Krushshared an impression6 years ago
    👍Worth reading
    🔮Hidden Depths
    💡Learnt A Lot
    🎯Worthwhile
    🚀Unputdownable

    Simplemente bello y triste

Quotes

  • Annete Krushhas quoted6 years ago
    What would it be like to live without consolation, or the desire for consolation? He would never find out, unless he uprooted the consolatory system that had started on the hillside at Saint-Nazaire and then spread to every medicine cabinet, bed and bottle he had come across since; substitutes substituting for substitutes: the system was always more fundamental than its contents, and the mental act more fundamental still. What if memories were just memories, without any consolatory or persecutory power? Would they exist at all, or was it always emotional pressure that summoned images from what was potentially all of experience
  • Annete Krushhas quoted6 years ago
    saw his parents, who appeared to be the cause of his suffering, as unhappy children with parents who appeared to be the cause of their suffering: there was no one to blame and everyone to help, and those who appeared to deserve the most blame needed the most help
  • Annete Krushhas quoted6 years ago
    ‘In fact,’ said Thomas, ‘you should change your mind, because that’s what it’s for!’

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