Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book
Rate this book
Never Mind, the first installment in Edward St. Aubyn's wonderful, wry, and profound Patrick Melrose Cycle, follows five-year-old Patrick through a single day, as the Melrose family awaits the arrival of guests. Bright and imaginative, young Patrick struggles daily to contend with the searing cruelty of his father and the resignation of his embattled mother. But on this day he must endure an unprecedented horror—one that splits his world in two. In Never Mind, St. Aubyn renders this vivid tragedy with profound grace and precision, and introduces us to the unforgettable, complex figure of Patrick Melrose.

181 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1992

554 people are currently reading
11063 people want to read

About the author

Edward St. Aubyn

20 books1,160 followers
Edward St Aubyn was born in London in 1960. He was educated at Westminster school and Keble college, Oxford University. He is the author of six novels, the most recent of which, ‘Mother’s Milk’, was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize, won the 2007 Prix Femina Etranger and won the 2007 South Bank Show award on literature.

His first novel, ‘Never Mind’ (1992) won the Betty Trask award. This novel, along with ‘Bad News’ (1992) and ‘Some Hope’ (1994) became a trilogy, now collectively published under the title ‘Some Hope’.

His other fiction consists of ‘On the Edge’ (1998) which was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize and A Clue to the Exit (2000).

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
2,515 (22%)
4 stars
4,749 (43%)
3 stars
2,702 (24%)
2 stars
716 (6%)
1 star
337 (3%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,245 reviews
Profile Image for Paul Bryant.
2,368 reviews12k followers
May 13, 2018
Update :

Oho! what fun! Sky have just filmed this and its nasty siblings with none other than Benedict Cumberbatch as Patrick Melrose... a perfect choice, nay, an inevitable choice. The Guardian describes the first episode as

a 60-minute near-monologue of craving, raving, shaking and sarcasm – occasionally interrupted by immigration officials, drug dealers, undertakers and relatives – as Melrose, in early 1980s New York, tries to collect his dead father’s ashes from a funeral parlour. Has any actor in TV history ever spoken at such speed and yet with such clarity for so long?

Confusingly, their first episode is the second novel Bad News. But let's not split hairs. This is good.

One is excited.

And now back to the original review.


*******************


I read this in one insomniac go (last night), it was like eating a whole box of chocolate coated scorpions, crunch crunch, their little exoskeletons shattering on my palate and the poison flooding all my internal organs and me saying mmm-mmm, more please. How Edward St Aubyn managed to dodge my book radar for so long is a mystery, I may have to complain to the shop where I bought it. He's deliciously horrible and horribly delicious. Essentially this is book one of a five-book tone poem of steady focussed hatred directed against his own upper class family and (as I understand it, in later books) himself. And of course the English upper class at large. In interviews he states that the five Melrose novels are all based on his own life. One interviewer mentioned that he has an older sister who never appears in the books – he said "It's the highest compliment I can pay her". Ha, yes, I see his point. So you may see these novels as the misery memoir-as-art. This first one is set in the early 1970s when Edward/Patrick Melrose was five years old. The cast is small : three couples, one boy, one servant. (And a tree-frog and some ants).
Although I did enjoy this small forceful geyser of gracefully described viciousness and I will be reading the others, I did wonder if once more my theory of what novels do was proved again – novels describe the many ways in which human beings are dreadful to each other. That's all. And this one does exactly that.
Profile Image for Helle.
376 reviews443 followers
July 31, 2016
I cannot get over how brilliant Edward St Aubyn is! Not since Jane Austen have I encountered a voice that so manages to belong, at one at and the same time, to the character and to the author and with such adept English irony. Sarcasm, acerbic dialogue and caustic wit fairly drip from St Aubyn’s pen. I can only wonder how on earth this author has managed to fly under my radar all these years. Well, no more. I ordered the two next installments in his Patrick Melrose pentalogy when I was about half way through this first one and cannot wait to read on.

The cast consists of 90 % unlikeable, upper-class Englishmen with one or two foreigners and/or likeable characters thrown in for good measure. They are holidaying in the south of France and are mainly engaged in drinking and bad-mouthing each other. Doesn’t sound appetizing? Nor to me. And yet.

The main character is ostensibly Patrick Melrose, a five year-old boy, but in this first novel in the series, we mainly see the adults Patrick is surrounded with, and it doesn’t bode well for him. His father molests him, his mother is a pill-popping alcoholic, and their friends are, except for one American woman, insufferable and pompous. A few select sentences illustrate this perfectly:

General Melrose did not find it difficult to treat his son coldly.

At the beginning there had been talk of using some of her money to start a home for alcoholics. In a sense they had succeeded.

He had suddenly lost all tolerance for his rheumatic pains and decided to go upstairs to Eleanor’s bathroom, a pharmaceutical paradise. He very seldom used painkillers, preferring a steady flow of alcohol and the consciousness of his own heroism.


I’ve underlined so many telling sentences in this slim volume. They abound throughout. I’ll give you a few more:

Bridget had not yet caught the marriage fever that tormented the older Watson-Scott sisters as they galloped towards the thirtieth year of their scatterbrained lives.

‘The dead are dead,’ he went on, ‘and the truth is that one forgets about people when they stop coming to dinner. There are exceptions, of course – namely, the people one forgets during dinner.’


This last comment is made by the most loathsome, self-loving character in the novel, reminiscent of Lord Henry Wotton in The Picture of Dorian Gray, who also loved throwing shallow, witty maxims into a conversation whenever possible.

The individual voices are so distinct and spot on that I almost suspect St Aubyn of having sat behind screens or under bushes for years listening in on different conversations during his upper-class upbringing. Except of course half of said voices express thoughts and not dialogue at all, and he couldn’t have eavesdropped on those. What remains, then, is a talent to capture the absurdity and shallowness of people and to combine the tragic with the comic – sometimes on the same page.

St Aubyn is not only sarcastic and witty but, somehow, manages to also be sincere and philosophical. Much of the story is, apparently (and sadly), autobiographical. I really have no idea how he does it, but this novel is in turn funny, moving, intelligent, horrific and just plain masterful.

If I haven’t convinced you to pick up this novel, maybe Zadie Smith can. She said this of Edward St Aubyn: The wit of Wilde, the lightness of Wodehouse and the waspishness of Waugh. A joy.

Profile Image for Guille.
928 reviews2,895 followers
June 3, 2021
“Solo no tener dinero es de peor gusto que hablar de él, con la gloriosa excepción de la de ser aburrido.

El éxito de un comentario inteligente compensa sobradamente la molestia de perder un amigo.

Nada supera el éxtasis que proporciona la sensación de poder sobre cosas y personas.

La amoralidad es como un buen traje, no sienta bien a cualquiera.”
Después de la enésima sonrisa que se nos escapa ante los despiadados comentarios y aforismos que esta novela atesora, cómo no comprender la fascinación que en algunas personas puedan despertar snobs hijos de la gran p... como David, el padre de Patrick, nuestro protagonista, aunque estas personas sean desagradables bobalicones como Nicholas o trepas siempre dispuestos a su poquito de humillación como Víctor. Mucho menos difícil me sería comprender que a todos ustedes, como a mí, les entrasen ganas de estrujarle sus atrofiados dedos de la mano para obligarle a ponerse de rodillas hasta pedirnos clemencia. Ni el saberle dentro de la siempre prestigiosa liga de los perdedores, ni el sufrimiento interno y externo que preside su día a día, día tras día, sea despierto o dormido, ni saber que él es más consciente que nadie de ser el único causante de ese sufrimiento, nos inclina a la misericordia.

Y es que la novela tiene mucho morbo: pedofilia, alcoholismo, drogadicción, adulterio, violación, crueldad, sumisión, maternidad culpable (compensada con una caridad ONGística)... Pero la novela está lejos de tener como principal atractivo ese morbo. Nada de esto serviría si no estuviera contado con elegancia, con un afilado cinismo, con un agudo humor, con una maestría incuestionable en la puesta en escena de episodios desagradables, y no estuviera plagado de sus agudas lucubraciones filosóficas.

Una de ellas (clave para entender algo del desenlace de la tercera parte de la trilogía), es la conversación acerca de una propuesta del filósofo John Locke. A saber, que una persona que llega a olvidar sus acciones es una persona diferente de aquella que las realizó y, por tanto, no merece castigo alguno. Hipótesis cuestionada por el padre con el argumento de que justamente son los que olvidan los que merecen el castigo porque los que lo recuerdan ya están suficientemente castigados.

Toda una cruel delicia, léanla.
Profile Image for Katie.
298 reviews478 followers
October 31, 2020
"He directed a heavy stream of water from the hose he held in his left hand onto the column of ants moving busily through the gravel at his feet. His technique was well established: he would let the survivors struggle over the wet stones, and regain their dignity for a while, before bringing the thundering water down on them again."
Thus are we introduced to David Melrose, one of the most hideous characters I've ever encountered in literature. He treats people, including his wife and son, with the same sadistic disdain. The first thing that struck me was simply how brilliantly St Aubyn writes. He's like an English John Updike, except the story he tells engaged my interest more than Updike ever has. Everything takes place on one day in the south of France. He has a lot to say about the manners of the English upper classes and none of it quite like any comedy of manners in the history of English literature. St Aubyn is much more damning. The spoilt ennui of his characters creates a devastating atmosphere of unkindness and cruelty.
Profile Image for Szplug.
466 reviews1,462 followers
May 17, 2012
It is obvious from the very opening paragraphs of Never Mind that St. Aubyn can write with a skillful elegance that summons the descriptor effortless from the vocabular storage banks held recessed in the depths behind one's eyes; and nowhere does this compositional ease display itself more readily than in the dialogue between the handful of English aristocrats and upper-class aspirants, vacationing within the coastal inclines of Provence, who comprise the cast of this early nineties novel. He captures the tone, cadence, and expressiveness of English privilege with a precision that is nuanced and natural; and the amount of malice and venom that can be compressed within an offhand remark, or succinct bon mot, is indicative of the spontaneously cruel and witty craftsmanship required of those who would joust amongst the colloquial alpha society of Island Blue Bloods. It is the best sort of writing, in its way, graceful and lithe, adeptly placed, paced, and proportioned without ever being overly ornate or dauntingly dense—quality matched with clarity throughout.

But I have to admit, I've got problems with this, to the degree that, having finished Never Mind, I am going to be returning St. Aubyn's collection to the futures market. Why is this the case? For me, it is the story itself, in that the material appears to neither match nor merit the quality with clarity that St. Aubyn proves so judicious in meting out. Never Mind presents the reader with an (abbreviated) day in the opulent but idle existence of the Melrose family—cruel, manipulative, and charismatic David, the father; the neurotic and ambidextrously-addicted mother, Eleanor; and their five year old son, Patrick, victim to both his mother's cringing self-absorption, anxieties and careless neglect and his father's sadistic determination to disabuse his son, often brutally, of any illusions the child may be harbouring about innocence. Converging upon this thoroughly gruesome domestic idyll are a pair of couples—one bearing a representative from the debased English aristocracy—Nicholas Pratt, a soft and rather ridiculous fop whose jocose self-deprecation serves to shield his personal diminution around David Melrose—and Pratt's current youthful bedmate; the other an established English academic who desires to ascend from being a middle-class jew into the ranks of the upper tier—though the price of admission apparently requires cultivating their same monstrous mannerisms and cutting snobbery—and his American wife, a reasonably sensible woman immune to the Old World upper-crust charms of David Melrose and his coterie.

The Melrose household is a toxic environment, a microcosm of the peculiar olio of self-confidence and self-loathing, pride and despair, amused detachment and confused alienation, boundless good-taste and grotesque over-indulgence, that has been the daily repast for those wealthy beyond all measure and who yet have no meaning in their lives, no responsibilities or obligations to fulfill beyond gratifying their indolent inclinations. In particular, there is a pecking order in which members in good standing are shuffled about as tongues perform their lashings, and arrivistes endure humiliation in order to dish out the same to those they have been elevated sufficient to look down upon. And this is a goodly portion of the novel. Nothing much happens other than our intrusive eavesdropping upon this select environ of a degenerate aristocracy, whose life of luxury—quite often attained through adroit marriages between financially strained noble scions with the appropriate heiresses of capitalist riches—has only served to strip them of all discernible or revealable traces of human desire, dreams, or feeling; the result being the ritualistic, banal, death-by-a-thousand-quips routine of clubbing and dinner parties where the top dogs maul their nervous inferiors when both are not combined in savaging friends and acquaintances who have the (mis)fortune not to be present. In this slim story, the few chapters spared to Patrick seem insufficient—we are introduced to this profoundly lonely and disturbingly angry child, observe him suffer a stomach-churning assault from his father and then burn in hostile resentment from various places of concealment for the remainder; it's enough to merit shock and sympathy, but generalized and without anything more. The part about Victor, the academic aspirant, and his writer's block within this circle he is trying to square, is equally sparsely set. It was enjoyable to read, in a manner, but there was really very little substance to it. It is a beautifully designed shell constructed around a hollow core.

I must be getting old. Or perhaps, having surrounded myself with the towering ranks of thousands of books all making their shelf- or stack-bound pleas for a turn in the spotlight, I'm becoming unwilling to pass that increasingly precious reading time upon material that doesn't strike me in whatever mood I happen to be in. These days I'm hard-pressed at work and basking in the unexpected, but gloriously appreciated, arrival of stunningly beautiful weather, in which such depressing and, ultimately, pointless fictional forays fail to exert the allure they might have done had this book been attempted back when the sun had been taken into witness protection against the omnipresent lowering clouds and endless pissing rain. Whatever the truth behind the situation, I believe I shall pass on presently resuming the tale of Patrick Melrose, the poor little rich kid. It's nothing against St. Aubyn's skills or his presentation, but rather that the story he has chosen herein to tell—amusing and clever and horrific though it be—merely elicits a shoulder-shrugging so what?
Profile Image for Joy.
504 reviews80 followers
January 4, 2021
Ben, ‘amannn beyaz, heteroseksüel dramaymış bu.’ diye düşünürken kitabın ortasında bir gelişme oldu ve ben şok. 2 gün allak bullak oldum detaylarla ve kitap bir anda değişti gözümde. Çünkü o detay kitabın tüm karekterlerini daha iyi oturttu gözümde. O zenginim travmasının sebebleri daha anlaşılır oldu. İki ve üçüncü kitabını okumamı sağlayacak bir gelişmede bitti kitap. ( salon konuşmaları beni sıksa da, kendimi Bridget gibi hissettim sırf güzelliğim ve gençliğimden dolayı oradayım 🥺. )
Kendini bir halt sanan baba karekterini boğasım geldi. Annenin ise pasifliği üzdü. Gerçekten pasif karekterli anne bir çocuğun en kötü şansı olabiliyor.🥺
Profile Image for محمد خالد شريف.
1,006 reviews1,186 followers
December 30, 2023

رواية "لا عليك" هي الجزء الأول من خماسية "باتريك ميلروز"؛ والدافع الأساسي الذي جعلني أقرر قراءة الخماسية –بل والاستمرار في قراءتها بعد الجزء الأول- هو مشاهدتي للمسلسل المقتبس المُكون من خمسة حلقات منذ سنوات؛ كل حلقة تُمثل جزء من السلسلة، وما أتذكره من تجربة المشاهدة أن المسلسل كان رائعاً، سوداوياً، مؤلماً، وأداء "بيندكيت كامبرباتش" كان من طراز رفيع كعادته.

تبدأ الرواية بالتعرف على شخصيات عائلة "ميلروز"، الأب "ديفيد"، الأم "إيلانور"، وأصدقاء العائلة "فيكتور" و"نيكولاس" و"بريدجيت" و"آن"، مع توضيح علاقة كلاً منهما بالعائلة، ومدى قربهم، وطبيعة شخصية كل واحداً منهم، وأيضاً فلسفته، ويتطرق السرد إلى مواضيع عديدة فلسفية وأدبية، مع الوضع في الاعتبار ظهور قليل لمن المفترض أن يكون بطل السلسلة "باتريك ميلروز"، ولكن بالرغم من قلة ظهوره، إلا أن تلك الأوقات القليلة كانت كافية لنفهم حجم المعاناة التي يعيشها طفل في الخامسة من عمره مع عائلة من هذا النوع غريب الأطوار، والمختل بشكل واضح، وعندما تقرأ الرواية ستفهم هذه النقطة تماماً. الأحداث والسرد كان أكثر الوقت مع "ديفيد ميلروز" الأب والكاتب، ذو الطبع القاسي والمتجهم، في خمسينيات عمره، لكنه لا يزال بصحته وبجنونه وشطحاته، قام بأفعال غريبة ومُثيرة للاشمئزاز، حتى في عمره الحالي، وكما قالت "إيلانور" أنه لم يكن كذلك أبداً، وذلك التحول الذي أصبح عليه، مُستحدث، ولكن ذلك لا يمنع أنه كانت توجد لمحات منه في الماضي البعيد عند بداية تعرفهما الغريب للغاية.

على الرغم من أن الرواية صغير الحجم -136 صفحة- ولكن سردها مُعقد وكثيف، تيار من الجمل التي تحتاج إلى تركيز، الإحالة إلى إشارات مُتعددة، واضحة وخفية، أدبية واجتماعية، أراء مُختلفة وأحياناً غريبة ومُقرفة، ولكن عندما تفهم طبيعة الشخصيات –المادية على الأخص- وتلك الرفاهية التي يعيشون فيها، فتفهم صورة عامة عن أحاديثهم، وذلك الحديث المُلتهب على مائدة العشاء في آخر فصل، والمبارزات الكلامية التي تتضمن دلالات وإحالات أكثر إلى الحياة الشخصية.

ذلك التعقيد للحكاية كان عاملاً رئيسياً لأن تغرق الرواية في الملل، حتى تلك الأحاديث المُثيرة للاهتمام تجدها لا تخدم الحبكة بشكلاً ما –والحبكة هنا أعرفها بسبب مشاهدتي للمسلسل المُقتبس مُسبقاً كما ذكرت- فكان السرد يمتد وينتهي وتخرج منه بلا فائدة، ما عرفته عن الشخصيات تعرفه من الأحداث من الرهبة حولهم وليس من تيار السرد والحكايات غير المترابطة في أغلب الأوقات، لا أنكر أنها كانت مثيرة للاهتمام، ومختلفة، ولكنها مملة على مستوى الرواية ككل، وعلى الأخص عندما تشاهد حلقة المسلسل المُقتبسة عن الرواية وهي الحلقة الثانية من المُسلسل، تجد أن أغلب تلك الأحاديث تم قصه، وتم التركيز على الأحداث المهمة والأفعال الغريبة الشاذة، التي تُقربنا من حالة "باتريك ميلروز" ومأساته الشخصية في العيش مع عائلة بهذا التعقيد والسوء الشديد، وكانت الحلقة شديدة الجمال والتأثير، فوجدتها أكثر إمتاعاً وتوصل الأحداث والأفكار بطريقة مفهومة وواضحة أكثر من الرواية.

أظن أنني لو لم أعرف الحكاية مُسبقاً، وأنني قرأت عن الروايات مُسبقاً أنها تتخذ نسق تصاعدي، لكنت توقفت عن السلسلة بعد هذا الجزء، وأيضاً ما يُساعد في الإكمال أن أغلب الأجزاء متوسطة الطول لا تتعدى مائتين صفحة إلا في الجزء الرابع؛ أطول الأجزاء.
فلذلك سأكمل السلسلة آملاً أن تتخذ منحنيات مرتفعة أفضل من هذا الجزء.
Profile Image for Mohadese.
410 reviews1,131 followers
February 1, 2021
"شیوه‌های آموزشی دیوید مبتنی بر این ادعا بود که دوره کودکی افسانه‌ای رمانتیک است و او آن‌قدر بصیرت دارد که به آن میدان ندهد. کودکان آدم کوچولوهایی ضعیف و ناآگاه هستند که برای اصلاح ضعف و ناآگاهی‌شان باید از هر مشوقی سود جست. مثل شاه چاکا، آن جنگجوی بزرگ قبیله زولو، که لشکریانش را وا می‌داشت خاربوته‌ها را روی زمین پهن کنند و رویش راه بروند تا کف پاهایشان سفت و مقاوم شود، اگر چه این تعلیم در آن هنگام شاید به مذاق عده‌ای از آنان خوش نمی‌آمد، دیوید هم مصمم بود که پنه‌های ناامیدی را در وجود پسرش سخت‌تر کند و مهارت‌هایش را در زمینه استقلال از دیگران افزایش دهد. غیر از این، مگر چیز دیگری هم می‌توانست به او بدهد؟"

×بی‌خیال جلد اول مجموعه پاتریک ملروز

عرضم به حضورتون که خیلی نمیتونم در موردش این کتاب نظر بدم، چون جلد اول یک مجموعه پنج جلدیه و عملا هنوز هیچ چیز شروع نشده.
این کتاب بیشتر در مورد فضا، زمان و از همه مهم‌تر آدم‌هایی که اطراف پاتریک پنج‌ساله هستن، است. حضور شخصیت اصلی مجموعه یعنی پاتریک ملروز خیلی کمرنگه و بیشتر در کنار دیگران و در برخورد با دیگران دیده میشه.
داستان به بررسی پدر و مادر پاتریک می‌پردازه، آدم‌هایی که هستن و دیدگاهی که دیگران نسبت به‌شون دارن.
حقیقتا کتاب خاکستری‌ایه اما وقتی به دیوید ملروز می‌رسه همه چیز خیلی سیاه می‌شه و این سیاهی برای‌این برای من جذابه که چطور یک آدم می‌تونه این‌قدر مستبد باشه؟ این رفتارها ناشی از عقده‌هاشه یا جنون؟
پدر پاتریک یک دیکتاتور واقعیه و مادرش هم یک معتاد دائم‌الخمر که از ترس همسرش گاها غریزه مادری‌شو سرکوب میکنه و محبت‌ش رو از پاتریک دریغ.
پاتریک تنهاست و عملا رها شده و البته گاها توسط پدرش آموزش‌ می‌بینه یا بهتر بگم شکنجه میشه و احساسات به شدت سرکوب شده‌ای داره.
من فکر میکنم این کتاب بیشتر یک پیش درآمد یا توجیه برای رفتارها و عملکرد پاتریک در جلدهای بعدیه. (هیچ ایده‌ای در مورد داستان کلی مجموعه ندارم، صرفا نظر منه.)
فکر می‌کنم باید حداقل یک جلد دیگه از این مجموعه بخونم تا تصمیم بگیرم ادامه میدم یا نه.

پ.ن۱: جلد کتاب اشاره به اتفاقی داره که اگر کتاب رو بخونید متوجه می‌شید. اما از نظر من این انجیر به شده نمادی از کودکی پاتریک و شخصیتی که دارن ازش می‌سازن.

پ.ن۲: تندیس نچسب‌ترین کرکتر سال 2020 هم میدم به ویکتور که عملا بخش‌هایی که توش حضور داشت رو رد می‌کردم چون باهاش ارتباط برقرار نمی‌کردم. ب_ب
Profile Image for Lili.
1,103 reviews19 followers
August 3, 2012
The reviewer who said Edward St. Aubyn "most brilliant novelist of his generation" must have read a different book to me. I hoped at each turn of a page I would find something to like about this book, I didn't, I found it a boring tale about boring and obnoxious people.
Profile Image for Diane Barnes.
1,538 reviews446 followers
May 6, 2025
This book is full of thoroughly despicable and reprehensible characters. The humor was scathing, the writing was excellent, and even though I tried to read it as a farce, nothing helped. I couldn't get past the awfulness of these people. St. Aubyn is a no-go for me, no way I can get through the rest of them. Sorry Dave, I did try, and you tried to warn me, but I have to consign Patrick Melrose to the trash pile.
Profile Image for Brian.
796 reviews463 followers
August 10, 2022
“…by why do people spend the evening with people they’ve spent the day insulting?” (3.5 stars)

NEVER MIND is the first of five novels in author Edward St. Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose series. The books supposedly have some autobiographical elements to them, and after reading the first book I can only cringe if that is indeed the case. In this first text Patrick Melrose is a little boy (5 or 6) and the novel mainly comes from the point of view of six adult characters who make up three couples spending a weekend together. Occasionally we get the child’s POV and it made me sad every time we do because we see how a child’s world is shaped by parental neglect. It was uncomfortable and heartbreaking.

This text’s tone is merlot dry. The characters are detached from most every emotional response to a situation. It makes for interesting reading. It is a very “English” book, and the dialogue reminds me of reading Evelyn Waugh, except in this text the characters are far less likable than in Waugh’s novels.

Moments of irony abound in NEVER MIND. Some moments were delicious, others too forlorn for words. An example of the latter, a woman writes a check to a favorite charity (“Save the Children”) in the presence of her own sexually abused offspring, oblivious to his needs all the while. Another cringe worthy moment of irony is when one character says, “Nothing that happens to you as a child really matters.” with the smug self-assurance that only the truly clueless can possess. When this moment occurs, the reader realizes that we are dealing mainly with fools in this book.

Side note, Patrick’s father, a character named David Melrose, is one of the most disgusting men I have ever encountered in literature. I detested him. The fact that he came across as believable and even slightly sympathetic is a testament to St. Aubyn’s skill as a writer.

Quotes:
• “He knew that she could not help him unravel the knot of inarticulacy that he carried inside him.”
• “It was never quite clear to Eleanor why the English thought it was so distinguished to have done nothing for a long time in the same place…”
• “Always think for yourself. Never let other people make important decisions for you.”
• “Wasn’t indifference more dignified?”
• “God, sometimes she was so cynical it was frightening.”
• “Why was the center of his desire always in a place he had just deserted?”
• “To break even the smallest rules by which others convinced themselves that they were behaving correctly gave him great pleasure.”
• “ ‘Nothing but the best, or go without’: that was the code he lived by, as long as the ‘go without’ didn’t actually happen.”
• “No pain is too small if it hurts, but any pain is too small if it is cherished.”
• “…in the end one must oppose cruelty, at the very least by refusing to take part in it.”

The book’s final two paragraphs is one of the more interesting juxtaposing conclusions to a novel I have read in recent years. NEVER MIND is not a long book (that is to its benefit…much longer and it would have been too much) and it has given me no reason not to continue with the second book in the series soon.
Profile Image for Ammar.
480 reviews212 followers
June 3, 2018
My first time reading a novel by Edward St. Aubyn.

Never Mind is the first novel in the Patrick Melrose cycle.

Patrick Melrose aged 5, living at his mother’s house in the France. The cast of characters are upper class in the 1960s. Lots of drugs, pills, and various sleeping partners.

Patrick is aching for love and affection from his parents, but he is alone, he got no companions or siblings.

His father David: wanted to be a musician , not allowed, so he joined the army and became a physician. His career is short lived and hooked up with Eleanor the daughter of a super rich American family. He is living off her inheritance and family mansion.

There are philosophers, and old people who are delusional and can’t understand the world is changing.

The novel is short and deep. An important event takes place to Patrick and im sure it will shape the cycle of the novels

Off to read Bad News.

Profile Image for Eric.
595 reviews1,086 followers
February 16, 2013
St. Aubyn does not, at least in this first book of the series, write especially well from the child’s point of view – and so the notoriously autobiographical rape is somehow less horrifying than it ought to be. Otherwise this is perfect, if at times slight. The prose is cool and pointed. The dialogue is almost never boring. The Melrose marriage made me think of The Portrait of a Lady but the Osmond figure is a real aristocrat, who augments Osmond’s cultured and covert emotional aggression with barbaric seigneurial outrages. An American poseur, Osmond could imitate aristocracy's fine aesthetized contempt, but not its primal license: to kill and fuck with impunity. Benedetta Craveri said that when the French nobles could no longer be warlords they became tastemakers. David Melrose is one such versatile monster – bel esprit and naturel grafted on a rapist bully. His conversation is intricate blood-sport. He poisons or subdues everyone around him. He will menace you, with his penis or his manners.

His disdain for vulgarity included the vulgarity of wanting to avoid the appearance of being vulgar. In this more esoteric game, he recognized only a handful of players...


St. Aubyn invokes the licentiousness of the emperors – Suetonius is David’s favorite reading and the psychology of Caligula a dinner party discussion – but the controlled cruelty of the Nazi doctors is not far behind.

David held the burning tip of his cigar close to the ants…the ants twisted, excruciated by the heat, and dropped down onto the terrace. Some, before they fell, reared up, their stitching legs trying helplessly to repair their ruined bodies. “What a civilized life you have here,” Bridget sang out as she sank back into a dark-blue deckchair.


Disinherited and defiant of his family David had found in medicine a salaried excuse for experimental sadism and lofty diagnostic contempt – and he practiced until he married a wealthy American woman, Eleanor, who having surrendered her money to this titled brute now cowers in a cave of booze and pills, her bathroom a “pharmaceutical paradise,” while he belches fire outside. It’s the plot of a typical bodice-ripper – adventurous naïveté, meet restraintless privilege - but set a decade after the first, fun ravishing, and with, you know, realistic, bored spouses – and helpless offspring. I knew I had to read St. Aubyn when Alan Hollinghurst called him “terrifyingly good.” This went down easy. On to volume 2!

Profile Image for Roman Clodia.
2,788 reviews4,320 followers
February 12, 2018
After all, what redeemed life from complete horror was the almost unlimited number of things to be nasty about.

Packed into a scant 135 pages (in my edition) is a world of cruelty, of brutish and deliberate superciliousness, of precise and measured mental and physical sadism - told through a voice which is detached, dry and deadpan in its disturbing wit.

It's the latter which prevents this from falling into sentimental misery-memoir territory: for example, as neglected, brutalized 5-year old Patrick hovers on the threshold of his alcoholic mother's bedroom, 'Eleanor sat at her desk with her back to Patrick, writing a cheque to the Save the Children Fund, her favourite charity.'

What makes this outstanding is the complexity of the characters: Patrick is abused but he's also greedy and a liar: witness the birthday present scene near the start. And his father, David, a monstrous portrait of grotesque and sadistic cruelty once had the sensibility to want to be a composer and still plays the piano. It is precisely this sensitivity which makes him such a successful tormentor: he is acutely tuned to others' frailties and exquisitely times his moves for maximum terror, humiliation and hurt. Indeed, his gimlet intelligence is equally turned inward: 'to know the causes of his failure did not diminish the failure, but it did make his self-hatred a little more convoluted and a little more lucid.'

There are places where the writing feels too self-conscious in its extravagant similes: 'her dark pink raw-silk trousers like hot peppers clinging to her legs', the ice cracking, like a spine in the hands of a confident osteopath', 'the memory of intelligent conversation tormented him like the smell of succulent cooking wafting into a forgotten prison cell.' Overall, though, this is a short prelude, novella length, to what promises to be a memorable set of books.
Profile Image for nastya .
388 reviews480 followers
May 26, 2021
“No pain is too small if it hurts, but any pain is too small if it's cherished” is this self-mockery?
This was angry, sarcastic and I suppose cathartic. Also a great case for huge wealth and inheritance taxes. Revolution, no?
So how to judge it as work of fiction?
enjoyment - 0/10.
writing - it was fine, some silliness like "urine-coloured light" not included.
characters - well, they were real people that author knew, I guess. and no time to flesh them out. I'm sure the real people were much more complex
plot - say what? one day/boring dinner slice of life of obnoxious and deeply bored snobs.
I feel I need to give this book a better rating but can't find a reason to do it. Oh well...
Also it's 100 pages long and I dnfed it on previous attempt. And I'm not tempted to continue with this world at this time.
May 26, 2024
Це найгірша книжка. Я весь сюжет шукала якийсь позитив, але так його і не знайшла. Батько Патріка найогидніша людина, він не бачить своїх недоліків, а у нього їх багато, особливо згвалтування своєї дружини (в результаті у них син); приниження (змушував дружину їсти фрукти з землі, при цьому поставив ногу на спину); згвалтував свого сина і інше. На Патріка матері повністю байдуже, я не побачила якогось прояву любові від неї. Гидко було читати про те, як оцього Девіда здається, боготворили, хоча прекрасно все бачили його ставлення до дружини.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer.
2,118 reviews1,705 followers
May 14, 2018
Series of 5 (or 3) books based around the life of Patrick Melrose (the first three novellas are typically published together).

Extremely good writing - beautiful use of language and real philosophical insight into a complex set of unappealing characters. In some ways reminiscent of Andreï Makine in writing style and (consciously) of Proust Marcel in its reflections on the past and portrait of a rich but declining generation. Semi-autobiographical the book's main theme is the effect of one's childhood/treatment from their parents on one's subsequent life - both as a parent and in looking for compensation in addiction (together with the life of the inherited rich this is the other key subtheme). Interestingly the book seems to effectively equate controlled crying as the first on a step of parental neglect techniques likely to lead to a lifetime of compensatory behaviours.

Overall a powerful and impressive set of books.
147 reviews
January 6, 2013
Very well-written, but icky. I choose not to spend my time reading about unpleasant Brits, damaged by class and too much money and leisure, doing unpleasant things to themselves and others. Is this meant to be an object lesson about what happens when people become estranged from any sense of communal responsibility? Give me Downton Abbey instead! :)
Profile Image for Antonomasia.
985 reviews1,457 followers
April 19, 2013
Whilst St Aubyn's books were mentioned quite a bit in the Sunday papers when I was a teenager, I'd since forgotten about him or, rather, conflated him with Augusten Burroughs - until last summer when a friend's reviews reminded me.

I have to agree that most of this book is far from enjoyable in the general sense, but it is very good. (I found it nowhere near so intense and draining as some Bergman films, however, and for a moment couldn't decide whether to write this or start the next instalment that very minute.)

The location of this family horror was unanticipated: late 60's - early 70's French countryside, long before the British middle class hordes got the idea from Peter Mayle ... I started imagining it set in the same locations as Claire's Knee, which film now seems more innocent than it did before.
I became, briefly, fascinated with pinpointing when Never Mind was set: 1968-1973, the only time when posh hippie flibbertigibbet Bridget could be buying both Oz and the Furry Freak Brothers comics at the same time. (Unfortunately I couldn't find when the Arles Progressive Jazz festival started, which could have narrowed it further.) Melrose is, then, some years younger than his author - perhaps simply because it's easier to remember a cultural milieu from when you're a bit older.

St Aubyn captures some common experiences from unhappy families - which can in some ways be alike, despite Tolstoy - even if many are not so frightful as his own. The very first pages introduce a character partly via another's carefully honed tactics to avoid him; there is the damned if you do, damned if you don't paradox: "[Eleanor] would never know what to say because whatever she said would be wrong". And is it common at the age of around five, I wonder, to experience revelation about a parent's intentions? This is not the first time I've heard it. Patrick Melrose's is truly dreadful: "although he realized that his father wanted to hurt him as much as possible, he refused to believe it." The horror of which is somehow pitch black compared with the epiphany I remember,'you've no idea what the effect of this is and you never understand attempts to communicate it'.

Patrick's father, David Melrose is singularly chilling: almost everything he does is sociopathically calculated with the intention of eradicating caring, connection and love. People who merely fly off the handle or fail to understand seem almost welcome by comparison. One of the more remarkable aspects of this book, which elevates it therapeutically just as it does as literature, is St Aubyn's narration of some parts of the story as each of his parents, alert to the complexities of all individuals and that even the most awful people do things which are harmless and possess some separate interests. Even if this were fiction (let alone the typical "Painful Lives" volume) many authors would be content with the outline of a sadistic villain.

Having the book's action take place in one day and including dinner party guests as significant characters not only demonstrates the way Patrick is frequently an inconvenience to his family, but it is done so well that I didn't realise until quite late that it's also a way of providing background to the Melroses and of creating another layer of commentary on the social milieu and on Patrick's experiences.

In particular the irony with which the reflections of Victor, the philosopher, are presented, that the unconscious " will seem as quaint as medieval map-making when we have an accurate picture of how the brain works" is even more remarkable given that the book was written in 1992 and that the limbic system and implicit memory (and their role in trauma) were only just starting to be popularly connected with the idea of the unconscious that decade.
Likewise putting a statement like "Nothing that really happens to you as a child really matters" into the mouth of Tim Not Nice But Dim, Nicholas, on such a day, contradicts Pinker's The Blank Slate before it was even published as well as commenting on a common traditional upper class view of child-rearing.
St Aubyn's account of dissociation is so very effective that it was actually absorbing and calming to the reader, not only a coping mechanism for Patrick himself in the midst of the book's nastiest episode. The whole book is very well-informed psychologically but always with a light touch that integrates it perfectly into the story.

I was most impressed with St Aubyn's metaphor's and similes which build his characters' world by employing their likely experiences: "like a spine in the hands of a confident osteopath"; a place of refuge "like a consulate in a strange city"; an old fashioned farmer who "had the sullen air of a man who looks forward to strangling poultry". And such attention to detail: having Bridget read Tatler reminded me of something I'd read years ago that it was supposed to be a little more "vulgar" and "nouveau" than Harper's.

Some have found the child's point of view episodes unconvincing, but I must disagree and I enjoyed most of the accounts of Patrick's escapes and games in the first half. (And even then he's not always a very nice little boy - he isn't quite as sympathetic as some writers would have painted him in these circumstances, and correctly so. If a kid doesn't have anyone significant to learn kindness and good manners from, it's hardly surprising if he has a slight shortage of both.)

Aside from these bits, the rest of the book is perfectly chilly. Like rooms in big houses which are too big ever to get properly warm, or where it would be vulgar to turn the heating on full, or for very long.
The more I think about it, the more impressed I am with the apt ways in which this unpleasant tale is told.
Profile Image for Shane.
Author 12 books292 followers
July 28, 2016
Much has been said about the Patrick Melrose novels, but I found this first book in the series to be rather underdone.

Three couples (the men are British, two from the aristocracy and one a self-made man with a knighthood; their women are a mix) meet for dinner in the South of France and give us a glimpse into their lives of leisure. The aristocratic men David and Nicholas are self-indulgent, narcissistic bullies, while their women are weak, alcoholic and drug dependent. The knight is Victor, a philosopher, who along with his American journalist lover Anne are the most grounded, and are placed as contrasts to the wasted and sad aristocrats and their ladies. In between this mix is five-year old Patrick, in whose honour this series is written, but who never rises in the book above being raped by his father David - a scene of terrifying quality especially when presented from a confused 5-year olds’ perspective .

The omniscient narrator cuts across all the characters at will and ignores the conventions of the novel by shifting points of view continuously, leaning on the narrative side, making this a very “told” story.

David is by far the most well drawn. He has failed at everything due to ill health as a child, leading to a weakened condition and insomnia as an adult; he has flunked out of Balliol, music, medical school and the army. Yet he terrifies his wife, the alcoholic Eleanor, by getting her to go down on her knees and eat the fallen figs from the ground without using her hands, and by pulling up young Patrick by his ears. And yet Nicholas worships David for his connections, and Victor too relies on him for introductions to the “club.”

That St. Aubyn is taking his revenge on this class of high society for his own damaged childhood is clear. You feel revulsion for the adults and sympathy for the child. David and Nicholas’s quotes sum each other up: “Those who are cruel to the ones closest to them possess a vitality that makes others dull by comparison,” “ Nothing that happens to you as a child really matters,” and the classic class distinction, “Shooting men and animals is the occupation of a gentleman, tending their wounds is the business of middle-class quacks.” And their women refrain from contradicting them because it is deemed “boring” to interfere while aristocrats exercise their unkindness. And it is this unkindness that forces Victor and Anne to leave and have sex instead of being stuck with such boors at dinner. Eleanor and Nicholas’s girlfriend Bridget cannot leave even if they want to, the power of despots is too powerful a magnet for these weak women. Alas, Patrick has no escape with such wasted parents.

That this book ends after the pivotal dinner scene led me to believe that all five parts would make for a more satisfying novel; perhaps if they had been edited for verbosity and combined into a single tome, the Patrick Melrose saga might have more impact. That said, I think I will read more of Patrick Melrose, but after a long break from this one - the subject matter is quite pathetic to digest. I’m sure the Queen would not be pleased with the behaviour of certain members of her royal court.
Profile Image for Carolyn.
2,629 reviews720 followers
June 20, 2015
In this first of his Patrick Melrose novels, Edward St Aubyn brilliantly captures the lives and manners of a group of English upper class couples living in indolence and luxury on holiday in the south of France. Patrick is a small boy of five who is mostly neglected by his alcoholic, pill-popping mother and bullied my his brutal father. I did not particularly enjoy this book and don't think I will read further in the series, as I found the characters distasteful and nasty but really that just shows how powerfully they have been realised by the author's elegant and often wryly humorous mastery of words.
Profile Image for Mara.
1,891 reviews4,264 followers
January 23, 2022
When it comes to art that deals with difficult subject matter, for me, it comes down to was the "suffering" the author put me through worth what I got out of it. Was the language so beautiful or the themes so profound that the painful journey worthwhile? For me, in this book, the answer is no, so this was not to my liking & I won't continue in the series

CW: child abuse, SA
Profile Image for Jason Koivu.
Author 7 books1,382 followers
November 11, 2018
It's hard to say you loved something that also filled you with so much hatred. These characters are abominable. St. Aubyn's created a horrific and sad world. I can't wait to read the next one!
Profile Image for Magdalen.
222 reviews110 followers
September 8, 2019
Was this a novel or a long poem dressed up as a novel? Because St Aubyn's prose was absolutely beautiful and vivid. The abundance of lyricism wasn't the only good aspect of this book (or these books to be precise)
What is really amazing was the fact that even though St Aubyn's themes include serious and important issues he addresses them so delicately without exaggerating or using hyberboles just to make it appear more dramatic. Not to mention that he didn't have to repeat,  for instance, that Patrick was depressed since the reader could tell from his actions. It's admirable that in an era where people try so hard to create emotional scenes St Aubyn depended on simplicity. What is also worth mentioning is that there was no glamorizing of any subject that was mentioned. Instead of doing so he provided us with a deeper insight of what people go through.
Plot and writing aside, the characters were so well written and thoroughly thought. He didn't neglect to show their intentions, feelings or thoughts etc.
Honestly? It was an excellent read and I am looking forward to the next volume.
Profile Image for Jessica Woodbury.
1,863 reviews2,915 followers
October 13, 2017
I can't say I recommend this book. So much that's deplorable and horrific happens in it. There isn't much in terms of likable characters and there isn't much plot, either.

And yet I was completely enthralled by this book for every step of the way. I can't explain it.

Re-read in 2017 as I finally read the full series. Forgot how traumatic and horrible it is. The whiplash of going from the sardonic to the traumatic so breezily over the course of a paragraph is indescribable. I had to put it down for a few minutes sometimes to gather my breath, but besides that it's compulsively readable. (content warning for child molestation.)
Profile Image for christa.
745 reviews368 followers
January 1, 2013
I know that a little extra excitement about a book really triggers my hyperbole button and it’s hard to dodge the exclamation points whizzing from my pores, but it’s happened again and I can’t shut up. I loved “Never Mind,” the first book of Edward St. Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose series. Love-loved. Mind blown, loved. My only regret is that I read it on Kindle, so I wasn’t able to snap it shut, sigh and set it on my bosom. Instead I did a less satisfying flick of a switch, closing of a case, bounce out of bed exclaiming: “THAT WAS AMAZING!”

This was the perfect mix of being exactly the book I wanted to read at that exact moment and, well, just so, so great. It’s a single day in the lives of a handful of upper class sorts living in England and it glides from perspective to perspective so you see the inner workings of David Melrose, a total asshole, non-practicing doctor who is supported by his wife’s wealth-through-birth. His wife, Eleanor, is an American who steadies herself with a constant mix of booze and pills. Their son, Patrick, is the star of this series. He is five in this book and is shaping up to be a bit of a bully, a bit of a daredevil and, by the end of the story, the victim of one of the more terrible scenes I’ve read. (I’m guessing this scene has been a series-breaker for some readers).

There is Anne, also an American, the novel’s conscience and her partner, Victor, a philosopher who is struggling to write a book about identity without considering psychology. Daniel is a younger party guest, oft-married, flying in for a party at the Melrose house. He’s brought a shallow, albeit wily young stoner girlfriend along for the ride.

The day will include just a trip to the airport -- with a detour to an amusement park, a violent episode, and one of the most uncomfortable dinner parties in the history of forks. And it’s all written in this incredibly detailed way that unfolds like scenes in a play and includes witty dialogue and something just short of caricature-style descriptions. These people are real and awful and they are seen writing checks to charity as well as doing the math on what kind of pill combo, washed down with liquor, it will take to drive the car.

This is a super shorty that was put together as part of a collection that includes the first four of the five books from this series. It’s also available as a novella-length single, which is fun. It’s also well-documented that these stories have a touch of autobiography to them and it’s also well-documented that St. Aubyn is a bit socially prickly, although every interview I’ve read with him has made him sound like my favorite kind of socially prickly character, the kind I can’t decide if I love or hate.

After finishing “Never Mind,” a glass of water, a pee break and snack, I immediately dipped into the second book of the series, which is so completely different it hardly seems from the same family. Patrick Melrose, now in his 20s, now seems to have a story that rings closer to the Bret Easton Ellis/Jay McInernay family. While it was off-putting at first to walk into something so completely different, I guess his ability to completely switch up tone, style and approach is admirable. Whatever, it’s still early. I’ll report back.
Profile Image for Beth Bonini.
1,391 reviews315 followers
October 13, 2017
This novel is a marvel of compression and elegant writing. After finishing it, I realised that the events unspool over a mere 24 hour period and yet the author manages to create an entire world.

The cast of characters is small: 5 year old Patrick and his unhappily married parents David and Eleanor; their neighbours in France, Anne and Victor; and houseguest Nicholas and his girlfriend Bridget. The French couple who serve David and Eleanor Melrose are just glimpsed at the fringes. The story is set in a beautiful home in France, which is filled with the priceless acquisitions from noble homes all over Europe. The people in the house are unhappy, idle, and seem to live an entirely pointless existence - enlivened only by dinners with their 'friends' and the various hurts they can inflict upon each other. In this contest of will and malice, David reigns supreme.

'Eleanor had been brought up in a string of houses where every object seemed to have been owned by a king or emperor. The houses were wonderful, but guests left them with relief, conscious that they were not quite good enough, in the duchess's eyes, for the chairs on which they had sat.'


Although the book is about family dysfunction, class and money and snobbery are key to understanding this particular family. David comes from an old distinguished English family, but he has been disinherited by his father. 'It was never clear to Eleanor why the English thought it was so distinguished to have done nothing for a long time in the same place, but David left her in no doubt that they did.' Later, we learn that Eleanor's family fortune comes from the American matriarchal branch - and some ancestor who made a mint in dry cleaning fluid. It's like an updated 'Buccaneer' story of English breeding and title marrying an American fortune. The novel is certainly a lesson in that old maxim that 'money doesn't buy happiness', but it does serve to make misery more stylish. The quality of the wine is certainly better.

There are some hideous moments of emotional brutality in this book, but St. Aubyn makes them bearable with his detached narration and his dark sense of humour. Of David and Eleanor's marriage: 'He had stopped his medical practice soon after their marriage. At the beginning, there had been talk of using some of her money to start a home for alcoholics. In a sense they had succeeded.'

The novel gives almost equal time to the various characters, but the inchoate personality and consciousness of Patrick haunts the novel. There are various struggles for dominance taking place throughout the novel, but none more potent and damaging than the one between David and his young son.

The character of Victor is a philosopher, and various philosophical discussions vie with gossip and cruel put-downs to make up the dialogue. At one point, Anne (the young American partner of Victor) and Victor engage in a conversation about the Roman emperors Nero and Caligula. Anne notes that Caligula's life story demonstrates 'how nearly inevitable it is for those who have been terrified to become terrifying, once they have the opportunity'. Not only does this truism sum up the novel, but one feels it will reverberate throughout Patrick's life.

Profile Image for Joy D.
2,844 reviews300 followers
July 28, 2023
This is the first book in the Patrick Melrose series. It covers a day in the life of five-year-old Patrick from multiple points of view. To say the Melrose family is dysfunctional would be an understatement. Patrick’s father is a monster, and his mother is addicted. Patrick longs for some form of affection but all he gets is abuse and neglect. I picked up this book on the strength of Double Blind, which was the first book I read by Edward St. Aubyn, and I loved every minute of it. This book is completely different and not in a good way. The writing is eloquent, but the content is appalling. I am assuming it is intended as a critique of wealthy families that have an easy life but mistreat their children. It is not my type of book at all – it is a “misery” book and one can only wonder how such a talented author decided to spend his time writing about such horrible people. Since this is the first in a series, I presume we will find out how a bad start in life impacts Patrick as he ages. At any rate, I cannot recommend this one. Read Double Blind instead.
Profile Image for Phrynne.
3,872 reviews2,614 followers
August 27, 2014
This is the first in a series of five books about a wealthy, upper class Englishman called Patrick Melrose. In this book we meet Patrick at age 5 and discover some facts about his abusive father, his alcoholic mother and his generally unhappy start in life. It sounds awful but St Aubyn writes so beautifully and is often very humourous. I enjoyed it very much and intend to move straight on to book two.
Profile Image for Claire Fuller.
Author 14 books2,431 followers
September 28, 2020
Oh, these people. I hated them all. This is a tough read and not just because of the awful people, but because of the life five-year-old Patrick is living. Despite that it is wonderfully written and I read it in two days. I wasn't sure that all these people in one room could actually not have one redeeming feature between them, but maybe I just haven't met people like this is real life. I'm going to need a gap to catch my breath before I read the next one.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,245 reviews

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.