Double bind
Edward St Aubyn’s yarn about the rewilding of an estate and the antics of the rich is so overwritten that’s it’s a slog, writes Max Liu
Edward St Aubyn’s reputation rests on his quintet of semiautobiographical Patrick Melrose novels, which follow their English aristocrat protagonist through child abuse, addiction and grief to parenthood.
So beloved are the Melrose novels, which were adapted for a Baftawinning TV series starring Benedict Cumberbatch, that a publisher would probably put out anything that has their author’s name on it. Or at least you’d think so from reading Double Blind, which is so overwritten that, even at a mere 239 pages, it becomes a real slog.
Where it isn’t clumsy, it is drab and awkward, right from the first sentence: “Francis ducked into the sallow copse that had sprung up on the land next to his cottage, pushing aside the pliant branches when he needed to and weaving through them when he could.”
Francis is a naturalist who is overseeing the rewilding of a country estate, and his girlfriend Olivia is a biologist. “Fascinated as he was by the rival visions of ancient wilderness presented at the conference, Francis soon found that he was even more fascinated by Olivia,” writes St Aubyn, in an early example of his lack of chemistry with characters, whose ideas about ecology and genetics sound like the sum of everything he has skim-read recently.
Olivia’s friend Lucy, who has a background in “science and business,” works for Hunter, a venture capitalist who is funding a piece of wellness tech called the “Happy Helmet.” He philosophises, owns a ranch named Apocalypse Now and surrounds himself with women who have the kind of “perfect body” and relaxed attitude to monogamy that’s the stuff of male authorial fantasy.
St Aubyn may be having fun with the way in which the extremely wealthy enlist environmentalism and highfalutin’ concepts of individual freedom in their vanity projects, but the execution of the satire is too convoluted to hit home.
The most successful part of Double Blind is the story of Sebastian, a schizophrenic man who is treated by Lucy’s psychoanalyst father. Here, St Aubyn finds an even tone of third-person narration to convey the instability of his character’s perceptions and poses questions about inheritance.
Double Blind could have acquired gravity when Lucy becomes ill, but St Aubyn blows it with dialogue that’s inadequate for the moment: “‘Does this mean I’m going to die young?’” Lucy asks the doctor who has told her she has a brain tumour.
“It might shorten your life, yes.” “Holy shit.”