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Parallel Lines

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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

NARRATED BY BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH.
* The Orwell Prize Finalist 2025 *

A brother and sister lost and found, in a novel that seizes your heart and enthrals your mind, from the author of the Patrick Melrose series.

‘We set off in opposite directions and walked around the world until we met, and I’m very pleased we have…’

It is summer. Sebastian is in treatment following a breakdown that has left him with a fragile hold on reality and a hunger to connect with the mother who abandoned him. His therapist, Martin, also faces challenges, including his adopted daughter Olivia’s tenuous relationship with her biological mother. Olivia, meanwhile, is producing a radio series on natural disasters, which itself seems to be running parallel to the events unfolding in her personal life.

Over a year, their fates collide in outrageous and poignant ways, revealing their destinies in a new light. Parallel Lines is a novel about connection, family, love, and the cascading consequences of our choices.

PRAISE FOR EDWARD ST AUBYN:

‘Perhaps the most brilliant English novelist of his generation’
ALAN HOLLINGHURST

‘I love Edward St Aubyn’
DONNA TARTT

‘Nothing can prepare you for the rich, acerbic comedy of St Aubyn’s world’
ZADIE SMITH

© Edward St Aubyn 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

 Family Life Friendship Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Heartfelt Destiny

Critic reviews

I love Edward St Aubyn (DONNA TARTT)
Perhaps the most brilliant English novelist of his generation (ALAN HOLLINGHURST)
A compassionate book… St Aubyn can express things you always knew but had never had the words for
St Aubyn’s writing is as astute as ever. A coincidence-driven comedy of errors… Glinting with hard-won wisdom lightly worn
The Patrick Melrose author brings his trademark dark wit and flinty compassion to this wide-ranging sequel… St Aubyn is clear-sighted and humane on the basic requirement of life: ‘Compassion is just love in the face of suffering and love does not run out with use – it grows stronger’
It is a novel rich in characters and perspectives… The story whips along… All the while, Parallel Lines is building towards a showdown that threatens to break its characters and their values. It doesn’t disappoint
A state-of-the-nation novel that brilliantly uses the conventions of farce, satire and social critique to evoke a nation drifting indifferently into chaos… St Aubyn’s portrait of the family and its sharp-edged sketches of various institutions of British life are often very, very funny and always penetrating; but they are also at times moving, especially when they relate to mental health… [Parallel Lines] has formal verve and political vitality (Orwell Prize for Political Fiction Judges, 2025)
St Aubyn remains a terrific writer… [Parallel Lines] is genuinely affecting
A tale of analysis, art and family dysfunction… In a novel brimming with wordplay, Sebastian’s eagerness to make meaningful connections is affecting
Parallel Lines is entertaining, tidily put together and…sparklingly well written
All stars
Most relevant
I liked the humour, poking fun at sacred things. A Trickster of a tale. Wonerful book and beautifully read!

Compassionate

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This is the first book by the author I have ever read. Loved every word! It is a beautiful blend of a Shakespearean twin story (Olivia and Sebastian) set in modern London and a meditation on life, human place in the world, and our (potential? imminent?) extinction.
Benedict Cumberbatch is a superb actor who brings out the word in such a way that I might as well have been watching a movie. What a treat! Thank you!

A perfect mix of the everyday and the mystical

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