St Aubyn: Mother's Milk

Shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize, Mother's Milk is the fourth of the Melrose novels. Now a husband and a father - and irresistibly caught up in a wreckage of broken promises, child-rearing, adultery and assisted suicide - Patrick finds his wife Mary consumed by motherhood, his mother Eleanor consumed by a New Age foundation, and his five-year-old son understanding far more than he ought. Set between the south of France and the USA, Mother's Milk is a breathtaking exploration of the troubled allegiances between parents and children, husbands and wives.