Edward St Aubyn, Parallel Lines

 

- The only reason to read this new novel from the celebrated British writer Edward St Aubyn is to luxuriate in his prose. It's glitzy and electric with a brilliant comic edge, and the dialogue snappy and quip-loaded. It's so upper-class English. Utterly delightful.

- Sebastian is young man suffering from a mental health issue. His psychotherapist, Martin, who considers Sebastian one of his most difficult patients, labels it ‘delusional omnipotence’. Sebastian’s road to recovery is central to the novel. 

- Also central is the lifelong after-effects of mothers putting their newborns up for adoption. Especially if the babies are twins and adopted by separate couples, and are never aware of their intimate relationship till decades later. 

- Sebastian is told by a young mother he meets, Olivia, that she's his bio-sis, something she's just found out from her birth mother. 'Un-fucking-believable' he screams and abruptly leaves. Olivia was adopted at birth but Sebastian, after two years, was sent to an institution. Olivia labels it the ‘Preferential Twin Adoption Syndrome’. She reflects on Sebastian. Was he the sacrificial twin?

- After months of intense treatment Sebastian comes to accept his predicament and recognises 'we can be vulnerable and strong'. 

- Olivia is a podcaster and is working on a series focussed on the world's disasters - climate change, inequality, environmental destruction, etc. 

- Aubyn litters the novel with fabulous denigrations of American and British politics. Here's an example:

...isn’t this sort of national decline just what happens when we have Etonian prime ministers? Eden and Macmillan gave us the Suez Canal and the Profumo affair; Cameron and Johnson have given us Brexit and Partygate.....the international fuck-ups were based on the same arrogance and exaggeration of Britain's autonomy and the scandals on the same combination of self-indulgence and mendacity.

- There is much more to this novel than my brief description can cover. It's not an easy read and can sometimes get tedious, nevertheless is definitely worth staying with. It's so invigorating.