Humor Quest
Mother's Milk
by Edward St. Aubyn
(Open City, 2006)
With my husband's company laying of scores of people tomorrow I'm in need of humor (thankfully, he's spared for now, though a year ago, he was the one down-sized). I know this sounds ostrich-like or even childish -- find a diversion to avoid bad news -- but frankly, I can't bear to think of all those people going through the holidays jobless as we did last year. It breaks my heart. True to my Irish heritage I find some comfort from laughter; even the dark variety is better than none. I'm relishing my NaNoWriMo novel for the very fact that I'm letting all my humor show, sometimes quite indecently. It's so fun to write, and frankly it's fun to read, especially when it's done well.
Today, I stumbled across Francis Wyndham's review of Edward St. Aubyn's Mother's Milk in the November 6th issue of NYRB. It sounds like just the kind of devilishly funny yet poignant story that I need right now. It's been added to my meager Christmas list -- a book or two and I'm completely satisfied.
Here's an excerpt from the review:
"Edward St. Aubyn's novels are so intoxicatingly witty that their high seriousness may not be immediately apparent. This is not tacked on as a solemn 'message'; it is intrinsic to his ferociously comic vision. Yet they cannot be described as social satires: there is no facile exaggeration, no smug misanthropy or studied indignation involved in the uncomfortable truths he tells.
... Mother's Milk resembles a piece of music in its deployment, within a firm structure, of variations on separate themes that contrast, conflict, and combine to form ever more fascinating patterns. The dominant motif is Patrick's double dilemma: hatred of and pity for his dying mother (to whom he weakly surrenders his share of what remains of their former wealth to squander on a ludicrously bogus venture) coupled with unreasonable but devastating distress at no longer being the single focus of his wife's love.
... I think Mother's Milk is St. Aubyn's finest achievement to date. As before, the wit of his sophisticated characters and the unconscious humor of some of the others combine to create a shimmer of potential amusement over everything he tells us, even though the content may be almost unbearably painful. Again, his prose, in itself so pellucid and controlled, somehow manages to convey the chaos of emotion, the confusion of heightened sensation, and the daunting contradictions of intellectual endeavor with a force and subtlety that have an exhilarating, almost therapeutic effect on his readers."