At Last

NOW AN EMMY NOMINATED TV SERIES FROM SKY ATLANTIC STARRING BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Book 5 in the Patrick Melrose series.

For Patrick Melrose, 'family' is more than a double-edged sword. As friends, relations and foes trickle in to pay final respects to his mother, Eleanor - an heiress who forsook the grandeur of her upbringing for 'good works', freely bestowed upon everyone but her own child - Patrick finds that his transition to orphanhood isn't necessarily the liberation he had so long imagined.

Yet as the service ends and the family gather for a final party, as conversations are overheard, danced around and concertedly avoided, amidst the social niceties and the social horrors, the calms and the rapids, Patrick begins to sense a new current. And at the end of the day, alone in his rooftop bedsit, it seems to promise some form of safety, at last.

Edward St Aubyn was born in London in 1960. He is the author of the novels A Clue to the Exit and On the Edge, and the trilogy Some Hope. Mother's Milk was the winner of the Prix Femina Etranger 2007.