Double Blind

If, as Henry James said, the first duty of the novelist is to be interesting, he would be happy in St. Aubyn's company. Double Blind is emotionally cogent and intellectually fascinating. There are reflections and conversations here which adroitly evoke those important intersections where science and our urgent contemporary concerns meet. I was gripped by it. --Ian McEwan

A rollicking tale of love and science in a world increasingly hostile toward both . . . Hectic--but very funny. --Amy Brady, Scientific American

St. Aubyn expounds on epigenetics, rewilding, art, neuroscience, and philosophy in this sublime character-driven novel. With his usual elegant prose, St. Aubyn follows three friends--Francis, Olivia, and Lucy--through a transformative year . . . St. Aubyn brings off a seemingly effortless and provocative examination of the mind and its refractions. This one's not to be missed. --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"[An] elegant, carefully plotted tale . . . More humorous but just as intellectually inclined as Richard Powers . . . St. Aubyn explores human foibles even as he brilliantly takes up headier issues of the human brain in sickness and in health . . . Thought-provoking, [and] smartly told." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Double Blind is a book of big ideas, in which the characters experiment with medicine, psychology, narcotics, religion and meditation to understand themselves and find peace. But as cerebral as the book is, it is also deeply felt, because St Aubyn has been thinking about these issues for decades. --Hadley Freeman, The Guardian

This is a novel with heart . . . Double Blind is both clever and compassionate, confirming St Aubyn as among the brightest lights of contemporary British literature. --Alex Preston, The Spectator

Shakespearean in scope and tone, moving from the intimate to the universal within paragraphs and providing tragedy, comedy and human frailty . . . A less practised author would run the risk of over-saturating all the disparate strands, but St Aubyn offers comment on the natural world, genetics, family dynamics, philosophy, psychiatry and ecology without forgetting the tapestry-like threads of the story itself-and provides a satisfying resolution to boot . . . Brimful of energy, this novel asks big questions--'How could one ever truly enter into another subjectivity?'--without giving us all the answers. --Zoe Apostolides, Prospect

Likeable and rounded characters and a celebration of the best things in life: the wilderness of Knepp and a touching but complex love story . . . St Aubyn's reinvention as a writer is heroic and astonishing. He has emerged from the 'very difficult truth' of this childhood to write brilliantly about that and, now, about a lot more. --Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times

There is in Double Blind a compassion that St Aubyn has elsewhere tended to either eschew or keep implicit. Despite the novel's acerbic edge, St Aubyn is attentive to his characters' suffering and vulnerability whatever their privileges . . . St Aubyn's prose is as elegant as anybody familiar with his previous work might expect. --Luke Warde, Irish Independent

This is the best kind of novel of ideas, as entertaining as it is chewy, not to mention immensely pleasurable on the sentence level. --Stephanie Cross, Daily Mail

St Aubyn has lost none of his ability to create rounded characters . . . and the witty dialogue is well up to the standard of the Melrose books. --Jake Kerridge, Daily Telegraph