RaveNPRIf Downton Abbey is not your cup of Pimms, then a post-1960 version with hard drugs and a harder sort of family drama — think Freud on a speedball — may not suit you, either ... St. Aubyn draws you in with some of the most perfect dialogue to be found in modern fiction, but even when the events he is describing utterly horrify, and that will be often, he reels off prose of such devastating beauty and seriousness that you can\'t look away ... If the titles of the Melrose cycle sound literal to you, you will probably hate these vicious, brilliant little books, but if you think that there is something to be gained from the literature of extremes, whether it\'s the searing perspective of a child, or a how-to on drugs, you might want to give St. Aubyn a try.
