Cape Times
(www.tonight.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3317465&fSectionId=358&fSetId=251)
Mother's Milk - Edward St Aubyn
The hype is justified...this is indeed the
re-emergence of a major literary talent
June 30, 2006
By Michael Arditti
Picador
When asked to choose between unappetising
quiches at a lunch party, five-year-old Robert points to his mother, who is
breastfeeding his baby brother, and says: "I want what Thomas is
having."
Although his remark provokes hilarity, it also
points to the two key themes of Edward St Aubyn's new novel: nostalgia for the
comfort and security of infancy, and the longing for maternal love.
St Aubyn's return to fiction after a long
absence also sees the return of Patrick Melrose, the protagonist of his
trilogy, Never Mind, then Bad News and Some Hope.
In Bad News, talking to his "seating
companion" on a plane (the horrors of air travel also feature prominently
in Mother's Milk), Patrick asserts: "I don't think there's anything more
important than being a good dad."
Ten years later, married to the child-obsessed
Mary and with two young sons, Patrick discovers just how demanding fatherhood
can be.
The dominant parent in the trilogy was
Patrick's father, the sexually abusive David, while his mother, Eleanor,
remained a shadowy figure, either drunk or working for charity in Chad.
In the new book, she comes into her own.
Having fallen under the influence of Seamus, an Irish
New Age "healer" who claims he and Eleanor were Father Abbot and
Mother Abbess in past lives, she has disinherited Patrick and left her
Proven¨al house to the Transpersonal Foundation Seamus heads.
Over the course of three years, Patrick, Mary
and their sons spend their holidays in Provence with the increasingly senile
and put-upon Eleanor.
Then, with the house secure in Seamus's hands,
they head for America. The novel has little narrative intrigue and its many
pleasures derive less from character development or moral conflict than the
author's subtle dissection of familial relationships, his rich metaphorical
exploration of inheritance and disinheritance, and his exquisite prose.
He particularly excels in the depiction of
characters on the cusp of consciousness. The novel opens with a virtuosic
portrayal of birth and the first weeks of life from the baby's point of view.
At the opposite end of the scale, the
description of Eleanor grappling for words after suffering a stroke is both
measured and moving.
Mother's Milk is not perfect. The
over-articulation of some of its exchanges belongs more to the world of Ivy
Compton-Burnett than today's moneyed classes.
Likewise, the trip to New York, while offering
a welcome corrective to the "rain of American images" in which the
rest of the world now drowns, dissipates the novel's focus.
These, however, are minor quibbles. For once,
the hype is justified. This is indeed the re-emergence of a major literary
talent.
Michael Arditti's Unity is published by Maia Press.