A wonderfully funny book, despite the heaviness of the topic, it reflects the truth about life: that levity can exist within the darkness and that relationships, familial or other, are what sustain us in the end.
The effects of her illness are felt deeply within her family and in her marriage to Patrick, who she has known since childhood. This novel is about a woman called Martha. For fans of Sally Rooney, Taffy Brodesser-Akner and Fleabag. Once diagnosed, Mason redacts the name of the illness with a “-”, a tool insightfully used so as not to detract from Martha’s story itself. Spiky, sharp, intriguingly dark and tender, full of pathos, fury and wit, Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason is a dazzling, distinctive novel from a boldly talented writer. At the centre of the story is the devastating mental illness that goes off like a bomb in her brain at the age of 17, leaving her with a crushing depression that incapacitates her for weeks or months at a time. Martha is thinking over her life and her marriage, trying to make sense of what went wrong. It is told from the point of view of Martha, in the aftermath of her separation with her doctor husband Patrick. Meg Mason’s debut novel, Sorrow and Bliss is the story of the ending of a marriage, of the complications within a family and about mental health. This is a book that you will read, immediately want to discuss with your friends and press into the hands of people you love. The paperback has just landed in bookshops which is why there is lots of chatter about it at the moment. I can’t remember the last novel that made quite so much of a splash as Sorrow and Bliss.
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