Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without Gutenberg?

It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt. This is Bookworm. You know, some years ago, I had the great pleasure of reading the five novels that together consist in the complete Patrick Melrose novels.

They've been available for some time as one book, but most recently they turned into a five-part series on Showtime, I believe.

Showtime, yes.

Yes.

And much to my surprise, I would not have thought that these books could be adapted, let alone

adapted to television.

But it is true that a five-part series fits the five novels very well.

The first two novels present a world that's as bad as it gets, a sexually abused child, a smack-addicted

grown-up, and then the last three novels begin with a book called Some Hope, and they do offer some hope.

Mother's Milk is not necessarily the milk of human kindness, and yet at last both of the parents are dead,

and Patrick Melrose is left to face a world, his world, if not the world.

And the actor, who I hadn't seen before, Benedict Cumberbatch,

plays Patrick Melrose.

He plays him to a tea.

Now I've got the author, Edward St. Aubin,

here with me.

He's here on this wonderful occasion.

...