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Mother's Milk

Brief Description
Mother's Milk was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the South Bank Literature Award. "So good - so fantastically well-written, profound and humane... it is heart-stopping" - Observer The once illustrious, once wealthy Melroses are in peril. Caught up in the wreckage of broken... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
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The fourth of The Patrick Melrose Novels, Edward St Aubyn's critically acclaimed series.

The fourth of The Patrick Melrose Novels, Edward St Aubyn's critically acclaimed series.

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Mother's Milk was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the South Bank Literature Award.

"So good - so fantastically well-written, profound and humane... it is heart-stopping" - Observer

The once illustrious, once wealthy Melroses are in peril. Caught up in the wreckage of broken promises, child-rearing, adultery, and assisted suicide, Patrick finds his wife Mary consumed by motherhood, his mother in thrall to a New Age foundation, and his young son Robert understanding far more than he should. But even as the family struggles against the pull of its ever-present past, a new generation brings a new tenderness, and the possibility of change.

"Wonderful caustic wit... Polished yet profound, it's even better than his previous work, and that's saying something" - The Guardian

Mother's Milk has the cerebral excitement and piercing funniness of St Aubyn at his brilliant best" - Tatler

Part of the Picador Collection

Series: Picador Collection

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781035063765

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 10 July 2025

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Picador

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 19.0mm

Width: 130.0mm

Height: 198.0mm

Weight: 198g

Pages: 288

About the Author

Edward St Aubyn's superbly acclaimed Melrose novels are Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, Mother's Milk (shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2006) and At Last. He is also the author of the novels A Clue to the Exit, On the Edge, Lost for Words and Dunbar.

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    "Our purest living prose stylist." - The Guardian "Tantalizing . . . A memorable tour de force." - The New York Times Book Review Some Hope is the third in Edward St Aubyn's semi-autobiographical series, The Patrick Melrose novels. Patrick Melrose, cleaned-up and world-weary, is a reluctant guest at a glittering party deep in the English countryside. Amid a crowd...
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  • Dunbar
    Shakespeare’s King Lear is reimagined in Edward St Aubyn's gripping story of a media mogul who has lost control. Dunbar, the once all-powerful head of a global media corporation, is not having a good day. In his dotage, he handed over care of the corporation to his two eldest daughters, Abby and Megan. But relations quickly soured, leaving him to...
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  • Parallel Lines
    A brother and sister lost and found, in a novel that seizes your heart and enthrals your mind, from the author of the Patrick Melrose series. Perhaps the most brilliant English novelist of his generation - Alan Hollinghurst β€œWe set off in opposite directions and walked around the world until we met, and I'm very pleased we have...” Sebastian is...
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    Never Mind, the winner of the Betty Trask Award, is the first in Edward St Aubyn's highly acclaimed Patrick Melrose novels, adapted for TV for Sky Atlantic and starring Benedict Cumberbatch. This audiobook is read aloud by stage and screen actor Alex Jennings. At his mother's family house in the south of France, Patrick Melrose has the run of a...
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  • At Last
    At Last is a miraculously wrought piece of art’ Suzi Feay, Financial Times β€˜A terrifying, spectacularly entertaining saga’ James Lasdun, The Guardian At Last is the fifth instalment in Edward St Aubyn’s semi-autobiographical series, The Patrick Melrose novels. As friends, relatives and foes trickle in to pay their final respects to his mother Eleanor, Patrick Melrose finds himself questioning whether...
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