Edward St Aubyn's Double Blind has brilliant characters – but they turn into ventriloquists' dolls 3/5 The Patrick Melrose author leaves his life story behind in favour of a novel of ideas, but the plot is stampeded by a string of hobby horses Edward St Aubyn, author of Double Blind Credit: Ernesto Ruscio/Getty Images The “novel of ideas” has always been regarded with suspicion in Britain. The consensus seems to be that ideas function in a novel like a succession of speed bumps, interrupting and impeding the smooth progression of plot and character. That’s certainly the case with Edward St Aubyn’s ideas-crammed new novel, which takes readers on a narrative journey so spasmodic that many will emerge with intellectual whiplash. Over and over again, the story is left beeping its horn in frustration while flocks of scientific and philosophical disquisitions gambol in its path, seemingly unshepherded.