Edward Aubyn - A Clue to the Exit

In five minutes I must go and fetch my daughter from her school. How will I tell her where I’ve been? My novel, thank goodness, is abandoned, and the sequel to Aliens with a Human Heart is unlikely to deliver any aesthetic charge, other than the stunned incredulity which sometimes sells fifty-three million tickets. Life is coming to get me, like the latest model of the sea monster in Phèdre , no longer the agent of divine cruelty but of pointless information, squelching down the beach, dragging its tail in the sea; it will soon crush me, downloading its scaly mass of triviality into my frail mind, but I am going to go down fighting, fighting for the flash of freedom at the heart of things.

EDWARD ST. AUBYN lives in London with his two children. He is the author of The Complete Patrick Melrose Novels ( Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, Mothers Milk, and At Last ). Mother’s Milk was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2006. His novel On the Edge was published in the United States for the first time by Picador in 2014. His latest novel is Lost for Words . You can sign up for email updates here.