A period of global economic turmoil may not the best time to read At Last, the final novel of Edward St. Aubyn's superb quintet of novels chronicling the sort of aristocratic dissolution that Britain is famous for. Can anyone these days really understand or care about the troubles of a family who "had a good run," lasting "six generations with every single descendant... essentially idle?" But strip away all the money, and St. Aubyn's Melrose family--with its history of child abuse, rape, murder, addiction and bad marriage--still possesses a little something that touches almost everyone.
Although the first of the Melrose novels (1992's Never Mind) began when Patrick Melrose was five years old, At Last provides enough background that it can easily stand on its own. The funeral of Patrick's mother, Eleanor, finally frees him from a lifetime of ambivalent feelings: hating her for abandoning him as a child to his abusive father, resenting the late-in-life irrational philanthropy that spurred her to give his "inheritance" to New Age shamans, but also desperately wanting her to be a real mother.
Eleanor Melrose's funeral is thinly attended by what's left of her family and friends, along with Patrick's ex-wife, his ex-girlfriend, his fellow AA confidants and two young sons. With easy balance, St. Aubyn moves the narration among the funeral guests, bringing respite from the often witty, often sardonic, but always perceptive musings of Patrick. He is the one who has suffered a lifetime of real family pain and has perhaps earned his resentment; but he is also the one who must accept who he is, "the inevitability of things being as they were," and decide what kind of parent and man he still could be. It is heartening that St. Aubyn ends his mostly disheartening, but also brilliant, Melrose cycle with a suggestion of hope. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.