In Bad News, the second installment in Edward St. Aubyn’s wonderful, wry and profound series, The Patrick Melrose Cycle, Patrick, now in his twenties, is traveling to New York to collect the ashes of his recently deceased father. Deep in the grasp of a crippling drug addiction, he spends most of his time searching for a fix, alternately suffering from withdrawals, hallucinations, and anguish over his tyrannical father’s death. Written in unflinching, breathtakingly resonant prose, St. Aubyn paints another haunting landscape of human suffering.
