The opening of Edward St Aubyn’s new novel, Double Blind, is as beautiful as it is unexpected. Francis is taking a walk near his cottage, noticing “the red defiance and yellow lethargy of decaying leaves, and the crows rasping in a nearby field”. He notes the “scent of growing fungus and sodden moss” and he glories in his feelings of being part of the life of nature around him. To those of us familiar with St Aubyn’s Melrose novels, this is a world away from the hedonistic, tortured, emotionally confused life of the rich drug-taker. This appears to be a new turn, a new world, away from his semi-autobiographical past novels.