Some hope - Edward St Aubyn

From Provence to New York to Gloucestershire, through the savageries of a childhood with a tyrannical father and an alcoholic mother to a young adulthood fraught with drug addiction, we follow Patrick Melrose's search for redemption amidst a crowd of glittering social dragonflies whose vapidity is the subject of his most stinging and memorable barbs. A story of abuse, addiction and recovery, the trilogy is a haunting yet hilarious depiction of a journey to and from the furthest limits of the human experience. Ultimately, Some Hope offers what the title suggests - a powerfully satisfying conclusion and the reconciliation between the quest for forgiveness and redemption, marking St Aubyn as a truly important literary discovery, one of the most original, intelligent and acerbically witty voices of our time.

'Our purest living prose stylist' Guardian

'This is beautifully written novel . . . whose harrowing but fiercely funny portrait of addiction is the best I've ever read' Time Out

'Tantalizing . . . A memorable tour de force' New York Times Book Review

'St Aubyn can write dialogue as amusing as Waugh's and narrative even more deft than Graham Greene's' Edmund White

'Mordant, acute, and ultimately deeply moving, this trilogy establishes him as one of the pre-eminent English writers of his generation' Will Self