Never Mind

A brilliantly executed novel. The prose style is concise, spare and, at times, painfully funny.

It's a fantastic read if you like learning in microcosm about how rich people can be nasty to each other.

Perhaps slightly less engaging if that's not your cup of tea.

Patrick Melrose is a young child, in this first novel in the series, staying with his parents in their house in the South of France. The events of the novel take place in a single day as a cast of characters gradually assembles at the Melrose house for a dinner party and an evening of gossiping, oneupmanship, and snide conversation.

The background of the Melrose family is aristocratic, the relationships dysfunctional, and the anxieties mostly financial.

Their friends aren't much better.

To cap it all, the day is discoloured by a single, quite horrific incident (which it would be too much of a plot-spoiler to reveal).

In short, the author paints a quite grotesque and unattractive world. It's not one I particularly wanted to linger in - but did so anyway because of the quite brilliant, magnetic prose style.

I shall think carefully before I read any more novels in the series - the TV version with Benedict Cumberbatch might be a better bet.