Parallel Lines by Edward St Aubyn

The title and author’s name in black writing with lots of multicoloured lines surrounding them and connected to them.

Parallel Lines by Edward St Aubyn is set to be published by Jonathan Cape on 1st May 2025.

Parallel Lines follows Sebastian, a mental health patient under the supervision of Dr. Carr, and Olivia, a mum coping with her young son's dinosaur obsession while she makes a podcast about the different ways we could become extinct in the near future. These two seemingly unconnected figures discover that they are biological twins, having been adopted at 18 months and birth respectively. Things are made even more complicated by the fact that Dr. Carr, Martin, is Olivia's adopted father.

The novel was recommended to me because I had enjoyed Séan Hewitt's masterful Open, Heaven and I can somewhat see the reasoning behind this, even if St Aubyn’s novel never quite reaches Hewitt's lofty, poetic heights.

I have never read any of St Aubyn’s previous work, although the Patrick Melrose series is one I was tangentially aware of due to its popularity. I have to say that he writes in an odd, philosophical way here that doesn't always quite ring true for his characters and I think in this case focusing so often on such pretty prose and philosophical thoughts comes at the detriment of plot and character. It came across more like Samantha Harvey's Orbital and Separate Rooms by Pier Vittorio Tondelli in this regard than Open, Heaven, both of which disappointed me (especially in comparison to Hewitt's work).

I have to say I struggled a lot with the opening chapters of the novel, and it wasn't until around the halfway mark that St Aubyn really hits his stride. The strongest sections are those from Noah's perspective, as St Aubyn expertly captures his voice as an underestimated, intelligent child. St Aubyn writes strongly on interconnectedness and the values we place on each other, however, and I left the book in a much more positive position than I had thought I would.