Friction that makes sparks fly

Though the relentlessness of its attack is kept up almost to the end, nothing in Mother’s Milk is quite so funny as its second chapter. This finds the Melrose family — 40-something barrister Patrick, wife Mary, five-year-old Robert and newly born Thomas — hiding in the guest bedroom of old Mrs Melrose’s house in the south of France as they wait for Margaret, the maternity nurse, to take her leave. The wait is enlivened by Robert’s pin-point impersonations of this dim but innocuous hired hand: ‘It’s no use trying to blind me with science, dear … I can tell he doesn’t like that formula you’re giving him, even if it is made by organic cows.’

Any thought that the conspirators are merely amused by fat, complacent Margaret is dispelled by Mary’s brisk summary of her failings: ‘She’s the most boring person we’ve ever met and she’s no good at looking after Thomas.