Parallel Lines

A brother and sister lost and found, in a novel that seizes your heart and enthrals your mind, from the author of the Patrick Melrose series.

* The Orwell Prize Finalist 2025 *

‘We set off in opposite directions and walked around the world until we met, and I’m very pleased we have…’

It is summer. Sebastian is in treatment following a breakdown that has left him with a fragile hold on reality and a hunger to connect with the mother who abandoned him. His therapist, Martin, also faces challenges, including his adopted daughter Olivia’s tenuous relationship with her biological mother. Olivia, meanwhile, is producing a radio series on natural disasters, which itself seems to be running parallel to the events unfolding in her personal life.

Over a year, their fates collide in outrageous and poignant ways, revealing their destinies in a new light. Parallel Lines is a novel about connection, family, love, and the cascading consequences of our choices.

Review

I love Edward St Aubyn -- DONNA TARTT

Perhaps the most brilliant English novelist of his generation -- ALAN HOLLINGHURST

A compassionate book… St Aubyn can express things you always knew but had never had the words for ― The Times

St Aubyn’s writing is as astute as ever. A coincidence-driven comedy of errors… Glinting with hard-won wisdom lightly worn ― Observer

The Patrick Melrose author brings his trademark dark wit and flinty compassion to this wide-ranging sequel… St Aubyn is clear-sighted and humane on the basic requirement of life: ‘Compassion is just love in the face of suffering and love does not run out with use – it grows stronger’ ― Guardian

It is a novel rich in characters and perspectives… The story whips along… All the while, Parallel Lines is building towards a showdown that threatens to break its characters and their values. It doesn’t disappoint ― Evening Standard

A state-of-the-nation novel that brilliantly uses the conventions of farce, satire and social critique to evoke a nation drifting indifferently into chaos… St Aubyn’s portrait of the family and its sharp-edged sketches of various institutions of British life are often very, very funny and always penetrating; but they are also at times moving, especially when they relate to mental health… [Parallel Lines] has formal verve and political vitality -- Orwell Prize for Political Fiction Judges, 2025

St Aubyn remains a terrific writer… [Parallel Lines] is genuinely affecting ― i

A tale of analysis, art and family dysfunction… In a novel brimming with wordplay, Sebastian’s eagerness to make meaningful connections is affecting ― Financial Times

Parallel Lines is entertaining, tidily put together and…sparklingly well written ― Literary Review

About the Author

Edward St Aubyn was born in London. His internationally acclaimed Patrick Melrose novels are Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, Mother’s Milk (winner of the Prix Femina étranger and shortlisted for the Booker Prize) and At Last. The series was made into a BAFTA award-winning Sky Atlantic TV series starring Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role. St Aubyn is also the author of A Clue to the Exit, On the Edge (shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize), Lost for Words (winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize), Dunbar and Double Blind.