Mother's Milk

The story moves through four Augusts, from 2000 to 2003, and through several points of view. Five-year-old Robert, who remembers his own birth with uncanny clarity, feels pushed aside by his newborn brother Thomas. His mother Mary gives herself so wholly to the children that her marriage empties out. His father Patrick drifts into an affair and then into drink, while Patrick's own mother Eleanor, frail after a stroke and in thrall to Seamus, an Irish guru who runs a self-discovery foundation, signs away the family's last asset, the house in France. When Eleanor later asks Patrick to help her die, the once rich and illustrious Melroses are forced to face what their past has done to them.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Family, Satire (assigned by AI)

Set in

United Kingdom, France, 2000–2003

Series

Patrick Melrose, book 4

First published

2005

Author's age

45 when first published

ISBN

9781890447403 (Open City Books, United States)

9780330435895 (Picador, United Kingdom)

9781035063765 (Picador, United Kingdom)

More

Wikidata