Sorrow and Bliss, Meg Mason
Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, Meg Mason's Sorrow and Bliss is a bright and brilliant novel featuring an acerbic narrator who has truly captivated the hearts of readers.
Sorrow and Bliss was a book I came across whilst isolating with COVID-19, and it was one of those books that came along at the right time. Since reading it, I’ve wanted to tell every man and his dog about it – I adored every page.
Sorrow and Bliss tells the story of Martha Friel, a talented food writer from a dysfunctional family. She is observant and, despite having the ability to be tremendously cruel, she is quick witted and charming. She has an immensely close relationship with her sister Ingrid, and throughout the book, we feel privy to all their inside jokes and light-hearted sisterly disputes. Martha’s loving father Fergus, a kind and dependable figure, is a failed poet, and her Mother Celia is an eccentric artist plagued by the effects of alcoholism.
At the age of 17, Martha feels her ‘brain break’ and, from that moment, she is repeatedly misdiagnosed and put on various medications; although she knows something is wrong with her, it is never clear what she suffers from. However, the diagnosis of her mental illness is not the focus of this novel – Sorrow and Bliss is so much more than that.
Meg Mason invites us into a stunningly raw and honest insight into the battle of living with an undiagnosed mental illness over a number of years, and she does so while expertly bridging the gap between joy and despair – between sorrow and bliss.
Full to the brim with humour, anguish, delight and tragedy, Sorrow and Bliss is a story about family, motherhood, mental illness and the messiness that defines all kinds of love. I can’t seem to fully articulate how I feel about this book, as I worry that nothing I write will ever do it justice. I simply cannot recommend Sorrow and Bliss highly enough.
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