Mother's Milk (novel)

All four novels are based on the author's life growing up in an upper-class English family and deal with issues including alcoholism, heroin addiction, parent-child relationships, and child molestation.

The film starred Jack Davenport, Adrian Dunbar, Diana Quick, and Margaret Tyzack.

The novel recounts the vicissitudes of the family of Patrick and Mary Melrose; it is divided into four parts, each being the month of August in the years 2000 to 2003.

However, Eleanor has fallen under the influence of a charlatan-guru, Seamus, an Irishman, a former nurse, who heads a so-called self-discovery foundation, and she has in effect given the property to him.

He arranges for her to travel to Switzerland, where she can be legally assisted to commit suicide, but almost at the last minute she writes a new instruction, “Do nothing.” Patrick makes his own interpretation of these words: he will never visit her again.