(http://momus.wordpress.com/2006/08/24/sons-and-mothers/)
Sons
and mothers Thursday, Aug 24 2006
Edward
St AubynÕs MotherÕs Milk
All children, except one, grow up. Or do they? A century after J.M.
BarrieÕs Peter Pan first made his appearance amongst us, English author Edward St. Aubyn
is asking the question - do we ever really grow up? And more, do we need to?
St. AubynÕs new novel, MotherÕs
Milk is a delightful exploration of the
dividing line between childhood and adulthood, whose central conceit is that
the adults among us regularly behave in ways that can only be called childish,
while our children frequently astound us by the grown-up nature of their
actions. Do we ever really outgrow our parents?, St Aubyn asks. Or do the roles
and relationships of our childhood - our insecurities, our frustrations,
constantly return to haunt us? Are we condemned, as grown-ups, to either repeat
the mistakes of our parents, or overcompensate for them? And what does it mean
to be a grown up anyway? Do any of us truly see ourselves as adults? Or are we
simply children who have learnt to hide our insecurities, our bad behaviour, under
masks of false confidence, politeness and conceit. Are we living in a world of
overgrown children?
MotherÕs Milk is the story of the Melrose family - Patrick and Mary and their sons
Robert and Thomas[1]. The novel opens with RobertÕs birth - as described by
Robert himself. This luminous description turns out to be a false memory,
however, itÕs actually Thomas who has been born, his arrival serving to remind
Robert of forgotten images from his own infancy. Robert is remembering what it
was like to be a baby by putting himself in ThomasÕs place. This transference
of perspective is a basic technique of the novel, with the narration shifting
from Robert, from whose perspective we see the first section, to Patrick and
then to Mary. Each section of the book is separated by a year in time,
corresponding to four consecutive summer vacations taken by the Melrose family.
This gives the book a snapshot quality, with each section showing the reader
how the characters and the story have progressed in the meantime.
The plot of the novel centres around the decision of RobertÕs
grandmother (PatrickÕs mother) to disinherit her own family, and give away her
old house in the South of France to a charity run by an insincere and conniving
young faith-healer. This disinheritance is a major blow to the family, and
combined with MaryÕs complete sexual and emotional abandonment of him in order
to take care of Thomas, it drives Patrick to a mid-life crisis. Frustrated by
his own inadequacy, Patrick turns to adultery, then to drink, and a cloud of
despair settles over the Melrose family, which is yet to disperse when the book
ends.
What makes MotherÕs Milk a brilliant read is that all this melancholy action
unfolds in prose that is as crisp as it is funny. The Melrose family fortunes
may be under a cloud, but this account of them is pure silver lining from start
to finish. ItÕs like reading F. Scott Fitzgerald, except in the words of Evelyn
Waugh. You can almost hear the wit crackling off the page. St. Aubyn has a
sense of humour that is as dry and refreshing as a finely chilled chardonnay,
and he combines this with a splendid precision of observation, a talent for
irony and a penchant for repartee. The result is a book that manages to deal
with the most serious subjects imaginable - death, alcoholism, adultery,
parental neglect - and yet be deliciously, light-heartedly funny.
At the heart of this achievement is the character of Patrick. A
successful lawyer, a caring father, a loving husband and a conscientious son,
PatrickÕs difficulty is that he is consumed by a sense of his own inadequacy.
Early on we are told that:
Òhe waited in vain for the maturing effects of
parenthood. Being surrounded by children only brought him closer to his own
childishness. He felt like a man who dreaded leaving harbor, knowing that under
the deck of his impressive yacht there is only a dirty little twin-stroke
engine: fearing and wanting, fearing and wantingÓ
This disconnect between his surface success and his inner feelings of
not being good enough leave Patrick in a perpetual state of emotional vertigo.
When circumstances conspire to reinforce his low self-esteem - his mother
disinherits him, his wife is too busy with their child to pay him any attention
- Patrick sees this as fulfillment of his own insecurity, and abandons himself
to a free-fall of despair. Yet even as he does so, he is unable to shake the
knowledge of himself as a figure more ridiculous than tragic. PatrickÕs great
gift is for disguising his insecurities and frustrations under a great deal of
verbal cleverness[2]. In order not to have to deal with his issues, afraid
perhaps of the magnitude of his emotion, or the lack of it, Patrick
intellectualises everything, turning all his experiences into anecdotes for his
own amusement, choosing to acknowledge his failures precisely to laugh at
himself, rather than as a motive force for change. This makes him charming, but
it also makes him his own worst enemy - in making himself more and more
laughable, he pushes himself deeper into the quagmire of his own emasculation,
while at the same time cutting himself off from the emotional connections that
could help restore him to a sense of balance. This description of a kiss is
classic Patrick:
ÒThey were kissing. Get into it. Picture of himself
getting into it. No, not the picture, the thing in itself. Whatever that was.
Who was to say that authenticity lay in being oblivious to the reflective
aspect of the mind? He was speculative. Why supress that in favor of what was,
in the end, just a picture of authenticity, a cliche of into-it-ness?
Julia broke off the kiss.Ó
This is a man who is too clever, too self-conscious, for his own good.
He is also the best character in the book, perhaps because he is the one
St Aubyn most relates to. ItÕs not just that Patrick gets the best lines, or
that the section he narrates is the one marked by the most exuberant, the most
vivid writing (itÕs an awe-inspiring section - if the rest of the book had been
as pyrotechnically brilliant as these 60 pages, this book would have been a
shoe-in for the Booker). ItÕs also that in a fundamental way PatrickÕs
technique of coping with anxiety is St AubynÕs own.
Because that is exactly what St Aubyn is doing here: heÕs using wit and
humour and a great deal of cleverness to cauterize the novel from the pain
inherent in its plot. And whatÕs more, heÕs doing this self-consciously.
All through the novel the characters know exactly what plagues them - Mary
recognises that sheÕs overcompensating for the scant attention she received
from her own mother by caring for her son to the exclusion of her husband,
Patrick recognises that heÕs having a mid-life crisis and trying to hide from
it by drinking, and that this will end badly - and yet they still continue to
indulge in these behaviours. These are not foolish people, they are people with
an extraordinary amount of self-knowledge, and in displaying that
self-knowledge to us, St Aubyn is becoming a participant in this consciousness.
Speaking to his friend Johnny about his behaviour, Patrick says:
ÒIÕm taking refuge in an allegorical realm where
everything seems to represent a well-known syndrome or conflict. I remember
complaining to my doctor about the side effects of the Ribavirin he prescribed
for me. ÒOh, yes, thatÕs known,Ó he said with a kind of tremendous, infectious
calm. Mind you, when I told him about a side effect that wasnÕt known, he
dismissed it by saying, ÔIÕve never heard of that beforeÕ. I think IÕm trying
to be like him, to immunize myself against experience by concentrating on phenomena.
I keep thinking, ÔThatÕs knownÕ, when in fact I feel the opposite, that itÕs
alien and menacing and out of controlÓ.
You canÕt find a better description of what St. Aubyn is doing with this
book. The genius of it is that heÕs doing it exceedingly well.
For all
the petulant behaviour that PatrickÕs desperate need to be reassured drives him
to - his drinking, his fights with his relatives, his affair with an old flame
- he is hardly the only person in this novel to behave childishly. In fact, this
is a novel where almost everyone, whether young or old, craves attention and
actively seeks it through his or her actions, from the three year old Thomas to
his dying grandmother. Indeed, one of the chief delights of MotherÕs Milk is the way the author skilfully draws out the parallels between the
behaviour of children and that of their grown-ups, making the similarities
between the two starkly clear. Even the actions of the United States in Iraq,
seen through this lens, begin to look vaguely reminiscent of a schoolyard bully
throwing his weight around. Ironically, the one person who probably craves the
least attention is young Robert, who, on the contrary actively desires to be
left alone:
ÒRobertÕs daydream was solitude. How could he
escape from the video cave? When youÕre a child nobody leaves you alone. if he
ran away now, they would send out a search party, round him up, and entertain
him to death.Ó
ItÕs not that there arenÕt flaws in this book. None of the characters
has quite the flair of Patrick (except Robert, when heÕs acting or thinking
like his father) and some of the things that the children, Robert and Thomas
say and do seem too precocious, too knowing - they strain credibility. More
seriously, though, St. Aubyn isnÕt quite able to sustain the jauntiness of his
early chapters - as the book progresses, it seems to sink under its own
gravity, not quite able to soar above the morass of conflict and suffering it
creates for itself. This may be deliberate (it probably is) but it makes the
second half of the book a much less satisfying read.
That said, this is, overall, a joyous and delectable book, one of the
smartest reads of the season - a book that is gay and guilty and at the same
time deeply emotional. J.M. Barrie, I think, would have approved.
Notes:
[1] I have to admit that this is the first St. Aubyn book IÕve ever
read. IÕm told that the Melrose family have featured elsewhere in his work as
well. I intend to find out for myself shortly.
[2] You see why I like him so much.
[Part of the Booker Mela 2006