poliphilo | The Patrick Melrose Novels: Edward St Aubyn

It took me a while to acclimatise to the Melrose books- they're quite chilly- but now that I've finished the first three (they're very short- novellas rather than novels) I'm looking forward to the final two. St Aubyn is writing the contemporary equivalent of Restoration comedy- both detesting and revelling in his characters, exposing their emptiness even as he gives them the most deliciously witty and malicious things to say. The first book gives us the protagonist as a child and lays the foundation for his adult suffering, the second shows him pin-balling around New York in search of a fix (that one is an education in drug culture) and the third takes place in and around a ghastly county set birthday party and features a high octane cameo appearance by Princess Margaret.