Double Blind by Edward St Aubyn Review

Edward St Aubyn’s latest novel Double Blind doesn’t really have a story per se, you’re just introduced to a group of compelling characters at interesting points in their lives and follow them for the duration of the book. It’s about human relationships and science and the pursuit of the next technological breakthrough but there’s no one main character or neat, self-contained storyline that could summarise the novel.

It’s still quite enjoyable though. Lucy gets a rare brain tumour and we see the process of what going through that must be like; she begins a new job with tech billionaire Hunter and we see what his bonkers life is like; Lucy’s friend Olivia is adopted and Olivia’s psychologist father begins treating a schizophrenic young man called Sebastian who may or may not be Olivia’s long-lost brother. And there’s some unexpected comedy (considering this is a Literary book) when the Catholic Father Guido accidentally doses himself with molly and booze during one of Hunter’s fabulous parties.

Some of the chapters are less interesting than others. I wasn’t that taken with Olivia’s naturalist beau Francis and his extended pontificating on the state of the environment, and he unfortunately gets the lion’s share of the pages once he’s introduced to the billionaire set towards the end.

Some of the chapters are quite difficult to read too, like Francis’ inner rambling (while rambling through nature), or Hunter’s near-overdose scene when he wrestles with physics or Sebastian’s word-soup when he spirals. Not that they were poorly written - St Aubyn is without question a first-rate writer - but that the sentences went on and on and on and on and… you can only read a sentence for so long, particularly ones that contain so many thoughts, before you find yourself doubling back and re-reading, which gets tiresome over the course of several pages.

And the novel just ends. Which is fine because it’s not like it was building towards something - the reader is dropped into these characters’ lives and is just as abruptly taken away from them. But it does leave you scratching your head as to what it all meant - if anything.

The title is a reference to a clinical trial where neither the researcher nor the participant knows whether the participant is getting the real treatment or a placebo, which ties in to some things Lucy undergoes and the overall science theme. Though I’m not sure what St Aubyn is driving at - maybe he’s saying that if placebos sometimes cure people then there’s potentially something within us that can self-heal that we haven’t discovered yet… or something woo woo like that?

I’m not sure who I would recommend this to but I thought Double Blind was a decent and sometimes fun read featuring a colourful cast of well-written characters pootling about their largely upper-class lives.