A Clue to the Exit - Softcover

"St. Aubyn delivers memorable characters, dark humor, and sublime writing in this stand-alone effort." --Library Journal

"One of the great comic writers of our time." --The New York Times Review of Books

"Perhaps the most brilliant English novelist of his generation." --Alan Hollinghurst

"One of the preeminent writers of his generation." --Will Self

"One of the great prose stylists in England" --Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones

"St. Aubyn is utterly fearless." --Lev Grossman, Time

A beautifully modulated novel that shows Edward St. Aubyn at his sparkling best

Charlie Fairburn, successful screenwriter, ex-husband, and absent father, has been given six months to live. He resolves to stake half his fortune on a couple of turns of the roulette wheel and, to his agent's disgust, to write a novel-about death. In the casino he meets his muse. Charlie grows as addicted to writing fiction as she is to gambling.

His novel is set on a train and involves a group of characters (familiar to readers of St. Aubyn's earlier work) who are locked in a debate about the nature of consciousness. As this train gets stuck at Didcot, and Charlie gets more passionately entangled with the dangerous Angelique, A Clue to the Exit comes to its startling climax. Exquisitely crafted, witty, and thoughtful, Edward St. Aubyn's dazzling novel probes the very heart of being.