RaveThe Times (UK)Parental death, heroin, childhood rape, emotional frigidity, suicide, alcoholism — the five Patrick Melrose novels have it all. In her introduction to this collection of Edward St Aubyn’s works, Zadie Smith tries to sell these books — tragic but also full of pitch-black humour — as holiday reads ... St Aubyn writes with breathtaking clarity ... \'Stop me when it sounds summery,\' writes Smith. They aren’t your typical beach books, but if you are after total immersion, you couldn’t do better.
Merritt Tierce
PositiveThe Times (UK)There is so much sex in this book. Couple sex, office sex, awkward sex, car park sex, bored sex, abusive sex, acrobatic upside-down sex. But this is not a steamy bonkbuster of a novel that you’ll want to take on holiday. Love Me Back is a dark, depressing work about a woman who reinforces all of the worst thoughts about herself by surrounding herself with bad men who are more than willing to use her ... Love Me Back was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W Bingham prize for debut fiction and Tierce was named a \'5 under 35\' honoree by the National Book Foundation. As an addition to the conversation on teen pregnancy, you can see why it is important and timely. But my god, it’s bleak ... If this sort of desperate, dark soul-searching moves you, you’ll gain much from this book.
David Foster Wallace
RaveThe Times... has a cult following that is as loyal as they get, and for good reason ... Millennials and those who fall just before that category will get it; older readers may find, as the Times critic did, that \'reading Infinite Jest is not unlike spending a prolonged holiday with a precocious but exasperating adolescent boy\'. Persevere for Wallace’s sly wit and observant genius.
