From Amazon, about the book who inspired "Junkie Doll":
"Some Hope" is the third part of The Patrick Melrose Trilogy, the first two parts being "Never Mind" and the second "Bad News". When we first meet Patrick in "Never Mind" he is five years old, living in the South of France with his cruel and spiteful father and his alcoholic mother. In "Bad News" Patrick is twenty two and a hopeless drug addict, and the book is set during a weekend in New York when Patrick goes to collect his fathers ashes.
In this third book, "Some Hope", Patrick is now thirty. Having spent years suffering from drug addiction, he is now clean, but has no career (despite a sudden and disturbing need to obtain an income) and has split from the girl he was supposed to marry. The three books together are excellent and you will rarely find better writing anywhere or from anyone. This, third volume, takes place before and during a party and contains many characters that have appeared in the previous two books (they should be read in order preferably, in order to make sense).
The cast of snobbish and unbearable characters all converging on a country house, in which Princess Margaret is the guest of honour, coincides with Patrick's attempt to make sense of his life so far and to make peace with the memory of his father. The prose is exquisite and, although most of the characters are thoroughly unpleasant and often downright nasty, you find that you care what happens to Patrick Melrose and what will become of him. The sense of elitism from a less likeable group of people is hard to imagine and the thought of having to suffer such unbearable company would make anyone grateful they had no links to the aristocracy! For those interested, there are two further volumes, Mother's Milk and At Last.
