At Last, By Edward St Aubyn

With At Last, Edward St Aubyn ends his semi-autobiographical series featuring the upper-class Melrose family.

The first of five novels began with Never Mind (1992), and dramatised Patrick Melrose's horrifying rape at the hands of his father, aged five.

This final installment offers Patrick – now a flawed husband and father whose life has been pockmarked by the fall-out of abuse and drug addiction – a final release. His mother, Eleanor, who he feels colluded in his early abuse if only through her blindness to it, has died.

Written as a set-piece extending across her four-hour funeral, it is as satirical as it is profound. Patrick's inner voice might still echo with dark hilarity and rage, but the final few pages suggest a shift in his being. At last, he may be ready to move on.