Parallel Lines: A Novel

From the bestselling and award-winning author of the Patrick Melrose novels, a hilarious and moving story about a group of wildly different characters whose fates are improbably yet inextricably linked—a novel about extinction and survival, inheritance and loss, written with St. Aubyn’s trademark wit and inimitable style It’s the summer, and Sebastian is in treatment following a breakdown that has left him grappling with his fragile grip on reality and his persistent hunger to connect with the biological mother who abandoned him as a child. His therapist, Martin, is facing challenges of his own, including his adopted daughter’s tenuous relationship with her own biological mother—a predicament that makes Sebastian’s struggle feel uncannily proximate to her own. Olivia is producing a radio series on catastrophic natural disasters, which itself seems to be running parallel to the events unfolding in her personal life, as her best friend, Lucy, faces a grave diagnosis, and her husband, Francis, pursues his mission of re-wilding the world. Over the course of the next year their fates collide in outrageous and poignant ways, as each of their destinies is revealed in a marvelous new light. With characteristic brilliance and humor, Parallel Lines investigates themes of dualism, determinism, connection, and love. St. Aubyn captures the life of the spirit as vibrantly as the life of the mind, in a novel that wrestles with moral and psychic anguish and the cascading consequences of our choices at every stage of life. A thrilling, wholly captivating novel from one of the most gifted writers at work today.

About the Author :
EDWARD ST. AUBYN was born in London. His internationally acclaimed Patrick Melrose novels are Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, Mother's Milk (winner of the Prix Femina Étranger and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize), and At Last. The series was made into a BAFTA Award–winning Sky Atlantic TV series starring Benedict Cumberbatch. St. Aubyn is also the author of A Clue to the Exit, On the Edge (shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize), Lost for Words (winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize), Dunbar, and Double Blind.

Review :
“Mr. St. Aubyn’s ravenous curiosity about the quandaries of existence makes his intellectual investigations feel vital and exciting.” —The Wall Street Journal “St. Aubyn is worth reading, nearly all the time, because his novels contain brutal and funny intellectual content. He’s a briny writer, one who dispatches a stream of salty commentary, sentences that whoosh past like arrows. . . . St. Aubyn’s talents are mighty.” —The New York Times “Intellectually roving. . . . Real humans—wounded, flawed and often beautiful—stand behind, and sometimes place themselves in the way of, the ideas the novel confronts.” —The Washington Post “An elegantly arch but empathetic excursion into impending apocalypse, and some of St. Aubyn’s best work yet.” —Kirkus (starred review) “From suicide observation room to cutting-edge art installation, Parallel Lines plots quite the journey. . . . In a lesser writer the temptations of sentimentality would get the upper hand, but St. Aubyn is clear-sighted and humane on the basic requirement of life.” —The Guardian “Brimming with wordplay. . . . The novel bristles with ideas. . . . St. Aubyn is at his best in comic set pieces, which recall the brilliance of the Patrick Melrose quintet.” —Financial Times “A novel rich in characters and perspectives. . . . [Parallel Lines] doesn't disappoint." —Evening Standard “Mordan humour abounds.” ­—The Telegraph