Parallel Lines (2025)
Why this one?
I absolutely loved St Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose novels (a rare example of a great literary property not entirely ruined by a TV adaptation, which was also rather decent). I’ve been somewhat hesitant to read anything non-Melrose by him, after DNFing something else he’s published in the intervening years (I forget which book), but when I saw this pop up on Netgalley I thought I had to give it a go.
Edward St Aubyn (1960- ; active 1992-) was born in London to a family with aristocratic roots. He attended Westminster School, and read English at Keble College, Oxford where (at the time a heroin addict) he passed with the lowest possible grade of degree. He has described horrific abuse as a child at the hands of his father and with the complicity of his mother, which strongly informed his most famous work: the Patrick Melrose quintet.
His writing career began with the initial trilogy of those novels - 1992’s Never Mind and Bad News and 1994’s Some Hope. He wrote several unrelated novels in the later nineties before returning to Melrose for 2005’s Mother’s Milk (Booker shortlisted the following year, losing out to The Inheritance of Loss), and the thusfar concluding part At Last (2012). Several more novels have followed, some with a more comedic edge, but attention in recent years was most significant around the 2018 Showtime/Sky Atlantic adaptation of the Melrose books, starring Benedict Cumberbatch. His most recent novel was Double Blind (2021), to which Parallel Lines is a sequel.
The latter is due to be published by Jonathan Cape in May 2025. Thanks to them and Netgalley for the ARC.
Thoughts, etc.
Parallel Lines has at its centre two characters: Olivia, a documentarian making a radio series about possible world-ending catastrophes, and Sebastian, a man in his fifth year of therapy with Olivia’s father, Dr. Martin Carr. It’s not giving too much away to reveal that the two lead characters, up to this point in their lives living ‘parallel’ but (almost) entirely separate existences, share a much deeper connection, which is revealed through the novel’s events.
Alongside these two, there’s quite the supporting cast for what is a relatively short novel. Notable significant others include Olivia’s friend Lucy and her techbro husband Hunter; Martin’s fellow psychologist wife and their biological son Francis (off eco-adventuring and contemplating philandering in South America); Father Guido, a friar who has been helping Hunter with a project; and Helio, an aspiring installation artist who Sebastian has met while institutionalised for a recent episode.
Despite the title, the book’s real interest is in bringing this eccentric cast of characters together, as memorably done towards its conclusion at a private dining event following an art exhibition. A little suspension of disbelief is required at the amount of coincidence required to achieve this (seemingly every character has some sort of tenuous connection to everyone else in the book), but it’s largely worthwhile, as this coming together is a standout of an otherwise somewhat uneven book.
Before going too far, I should admit one thing: I read this without realising it was a sequel to a book I hadn’t read. I don’t think I’m alone in this: much of the publicity avoids making this connection, presumably for fear of alienating newcomers, and at least one major review national newspaper’s review completely fails to mention it. In some senses I’m OK with this: it’s always interesting to review a book in this ‘pure’ fashion, to establish whether or not it stands alone (particularly when that’s how it’s being publicised).
On the other hand, I did feel slightly irritated (mainly at myself, for not having done the research). In this case, the existence of Double Blind explains away some of the bigger frustrations I had with Parallel Lines, namely that a large proportion of its extensive cast felt underused to the point where I was repeatedly left wondering why St Aubyn had bothered to include them. The answer is presumably largely fan-service of the ‘what are they up to now, I wonder?’ variety, for those who enjoyed the first book. From what I can gather, Olivia is the key character carried over from the first book, in that she remains central to this one rather than just one of many moving parts like the others who feature in both. But I could be wrong, of course, having not read Double Blind.
I don’t believe that Sebastian featured in that book (again, happy to be corrected on this!) and if we focus just on his story, Parallel Lines is much more satisfying as a standalone. In any case, he’s by some margin the most fully-realised character, the one with the most interesting storyline (around which everything else orbits, more or less successfully) and the spark for by far the best writing on display. This may be because, as with Melrose, in Sebastian we find St Aubyn diving again into the well of autobiography, which seems to be his richest seam. Sebastian is, of course, nothing much like Patrick. He’s endearing, somewhat wide-eyed at the world, and (at least by the book’s end) very much capable of charming and beguiling those around him. But like Patrick (and Edward) he has suffered abuse at the hand of his father (or fathers plural, in this case) and both suffered and caused suffering as a result.
His sections are the ones that fizz and spark, with his free associative language taking us on entertaining journeys (sometimes troubling ones, too, but always intriguing and betraying his character as a supremely intelligent mind boxed in by acquired social and mental blocks). There’s a childlike naivete to his thought process (hammered home a little in an interaction towards the conclusion) that enhances his charm even as we know it’s masking darkness.
The slight consequent issue is that most of the other characters fade into the background, including one of the key ones in Olivia, who I struggled to find especially interesting, and her family, who were perhaps purposefully annoying but not interestingly enough so. Hunter and Lucy may be more interesting to readers of the previous novel, but again I can’t comment. There are exceptions: Helio is likeable enough and works as a device for bringing Sebastian out of his shell as a character; and Father Guido is probably the other really interesting character in the book, though I didn’t feel we had quite enough time with him to fully explore his ‘man out of time and place’ role in the otherwise fairly culturally homogeneous grouping.
Ultimately, I found enough to enjoy in revisiting St Aubyn’s evident talents (particularly when they catch fire when voicing Sebastian) but didn’t feel this book entirely worked as a standalone. Sebastian’s development aside, plot points felt like they came and went, perhaps sometimes as some sort of resolution to threads begun in Double Blind and sometimes (as strongly hinted at the end) perhaps lighting the torchpaper for strands to be picked up in a future continuation. If St Aubyn is indeed reverting to this kind of multi-novel character development (and especially if Sebastian features prominently) then I’m fully on board with that, but in the meantime this felt in solus like a slight and only occasionally brilliant addition to his body of work.
Score
7.5
An enjoyable use of time, but not entirely satisfying in isolation. (I am going to read Double Blind at some point as see if it has any impact on my opinion.)
Next up
Back to the Women’s Prize shortlist, with The Persians (which I hope gets less annoying than its first chapters).
