Patrick Melrose, Volume 1: Never Mind, Bad News and Some Hope cover art

Patrick Melrose, Volume 1: Never Mind, Bad News and Some Hope

Never Mind, Bad News and Some Hope

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Patrick Melrose, Volume 1: Never Mind, Bad News and Some Hope

By: Edward St. Aubyn
Narrated by: Alex Jennings
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

Read by actor Alex Jennings, Patrick Melrose Volume 1 contains the first three novels in Edward St Aubyn's semi-autobiographical series, filmed for Sky Atlantic and starring Benedict Cumberbatch as aristocratic addict, Patrick.

Moving from Provence to New York to Gloucestershire, from the savageries of a childhood with a cruel father and an alcoholic mother to an adulthood fraught with addiction, Patrick Melrose is on a mission to escape himself.

But the drugs don’t make him forget his past, and the glittering parties offer him no redemption . . .

Searingly funny and deeply humane, Patrick Melrose Volume 1 contains the first three novels in the Patrick Melrose series, Never Mind, Bad News and Some Hope. Patrick Melrose Volume 2 is also available, containing the final two novels in the series, Mother’s Milk and At Last.

©Edward St Aubyn 2018 (P)2018 Macmillan Digital Audio Biographical Fiction Coming of Age Dark Humour Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Movie, TV & Video Game Tie-Ins Tie-in Funny Heartfelt

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Kiss and Kin cover art
Midnight Cowboy cover art
O Brother cover art
Cat's Cradle cover art
Strangers on a Train (Dramatized) cover art
The Eiger Sanction cover art
The Lessons cover art
Dangerous Pleasures cover art
The Parisians cover art

Critic reviews

The Melrose sequence is now clearly one of the major achievements of contemporary British fiction. Stingingly well-written and exhilaratingly funny (David Sexton)

Perhaps the most brilliant English novelist of his generation (Alan Hollinghurst)

St Aubyn puts an entire family under a microscope, laying bare all its painful, unavoidable complexities. At once epic and intimate, appalling and comic, the novels are masterpieces, each and every one (Maggie O’Farrell)
All stars
Most relevant  
This is such a beautifully written, thought provoking book. It has pathos, humour, an exploration of vengeance and forgiveness in the face of evil acts, and the best and worst parts of masculinity. The narration is fantastic

Awesome

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Some parts of the story were sad to read as the protagonist delved deeper and deeper into self destruction and addiction.It is undoubtedly a work of high intelligence and a succinct social commentary on the upper class society made without compromise or dilution.

Excellent character study and attention to detail.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Reading was faultless. Drooped a little in the middle though perhaps necessary to get a truly rotten sense of Patrick's smelly drug habit. Seems there's no need to EVER be jealous of the mostly awful elite, their absurd hierarchies and incredibly empty lives, though the gossipy details were almost as addictive as P's attraction to heroin. Still, I wish they weren't so ... um ... in charge.

Posh Bores Meets Glimpse of Redemption

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Amazing. Can't recommend enough.
This is told linearly, as opposed to the programme. Listen.

Different from the (wonderful) programme version

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Having watched the first tv episode of the book, I was intrigued to see if the book was any good. Cumberbatch is hilarious in his portrayal of the main character and I am pleased to say the narrator does equally well in his delivery. I have been laughing out loud at the descriptions offered. Its a sad subject but delivered in a manner that is cathartic and humorous. I read some reviews of people who said they just didn't understand what was going on at all. I am not sure what was so difficult to understand. The story is of a young man retelling his experiences as an addict and as a person who has experienced incest. Not pleasant subject matter but refreshingly told with humour and irony.

Uncomfortable subject humorously delivered

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Disturbing, sad, enthralling and funny all at once. Excellent writing and a wonderful performance by Alex Jennings. The people who appear in this story are so deliciously appalling that a sort of addiction to listening sets in, which is somewhat ironic. I'm going straight on to the next volume.

Excellent

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
it's quite a feat for the author to write such an engaging book when so many of the characters are dislikeable and unsympathetic. Apart from s few dodgy accents which made me wince I really enjoyed this book

a fascinating insight into a privileged worl

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Distressing read, and populated entirely by awful people. The second and third books that I listened to improved, with dry humour. I shan't read the remaining books in the series.

Distressing Read

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I'm late to party in reading these books. They are very cleverly written and fascinating. It really makes me glad I am not part of that class, thoroughly horrible people who are bitchy, 2 faced, self absorbed, mean spirited and above all very dull. Princess Margaret sounds like a real pain in the ass which is not a surprise. Ugh! awful snobs.

Exceptional writing

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Brilliant performance by Alex Jennings who brings to life characters who are at once repellent and fascinating!

Totally absorbing

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews