Meg Mason

Everyone tells Martha Friel she is clever and beautiful, a brilliant writer who has been loved every day of her adult life by one man, her husband Patrick. A gift - her mother once said - not everybody gets.

So why is everything broken? Why is Martha - on the edge of 40 - friendless, practically jobless and so often sad? And why did Patrick decide to leave?

Maybe she is just too sensitive, someone who finds it harder to be alive than most people. Or maybe - as she has long believed - there is something wrong with her. Something that broke when a little bomb went off in her brain, at 17, and left her changed in a way that no doctor or therapist has ever been able to explain.

Forced to return to her childhood home to live with her dysfunctional, bohemian parents (but without the help of her devoted, foul-mouthed sister Ingrid), Martha has one last chance to find out whether a life is ever too broken to fix - or whether, maybe, by starting over, she will get to write a better ending for herself.

Sorrow and Bliss

Martha Friel just turned forty. Once, she worked at Vogue and planned to write a novel. Now, she creates internet content. She used to live in a pied-à-terre in Paris. Now she lives in a gated community in Oxford, the only person she knows without a PhD, a baby or both, in a house she hates but cannot bear to leave. But she must leave, now that her husband Patrick—the kind who cooks, throws her birthday parties, who loves her and has only ever wanted her to be happy—has just moved out.

Because there’s something wrong with Martha, and has been for a long time. When she was seventeen, a little bomb went off in her brain and she was never the same. But countless doctors, endless therapy, every kind of drug later, she still doesn’t know what’s wrong, why she spends days unable to get out of bed or alienates both strangers and her loved ones with casually cruel remarks.

And she has nowhere to go except her childhood home: a bohemian (dilapidated) townhouse in a romantic (rundown) part of London—to live with her mother, a minorly important sculptor (and major drinker) and her father, a famous poet (though unpublished) and try to survive without the devoted, potty-mouthed sister who made all the chaos bearable back then, and is now too busy or too fed up to deal with her.

But maybe, by starting over, Martha will get to write a better ending for herself—and she’ll find out that she’s not quite finished after all.

A Novel

Quoted from Max Porter, Grief is the Thing with feathers (2015)

sina (she/her) 

You were done, you were done, you were done being hopeless.

'What Im most interested to know is what diagnosis you've given yourself, Martha.' I paused as if I had to think about it. 'That I'm not good at being a person. I seem to find it more difficult to be alive than other people.'

When you are a woman over thirty, with a husband but without children, married couples at parties are interested to know why. They agree with each other that having children is the best thing they have ever done. According to the husband, you should just get on with it; the wife says you don't want to leave it too late. Privately, they are wondering if there is something medically wrong with you. They wish they could ask directly. Perhaps, if they can outlast your silence, you will offer it up of your own accord. 

In the kitchen, drinking tea, I told Patrick that it had been like a terrible party. He said, 'Because you could not stop making small talk?' I said no. 'Because only one person came.' 

It is hard to look into someone's eyes. Even when you love them, it is diffcult to sustain it, for the sense of being seen through. In some way, found out. 

'Nostos, Martha, returning home. Algos, pain. Nostalgia is the suffering caused by our unappeased yearning to return.' Whether or not, he said, the home we long for ever existed.

The idea of being pregnant was not funny but people were laughing. I was serious in not wanting to be a mother but the thought that I might, or the image of me becoming one shortly, they appeared to find hilarious. 

Normal people say, I cant imagine feeling so bad I'd genuinely want to die. I do not try and explain that it isnt that you want to die. It is that you know you are not supposed to be alive, feeling a tiredness that powders your bones, a tiredness with so much fear. The unnatural fact of living is something you must eventually fix.

This novel is about a woman called Martha. She knows there is something wrong with her but she doesn't know what it is. Her husband Patrick thinks she is fine. He says everyone has something, the thing is just to keep going.

By the time Martha finds out what is wrong, it doesn't really matter anymore. It is too late to get the only thing she has ever wanted. Or maybe it will turn out that you can stop loving someone and start again from nothing - if you can find something else to want.

Emiley Jones

Everything is broken and messed up and completely fine. That is what life is. It's only the ratios that change. usually on their own.

…because it is too much work to explain to them that you can stop and start again from nothing. That you can love the same person twice.

I have been loved every day of my adult life. I have been unbearable. But I have never been unloved. I have felt alone, but I have never been alone. And I’ve been forgiven for the unforgivable things I have done. 

I never wrote it down. I can’t remember where it came from. But it plays all the time in my head, repeating itself like a phrase of music. The recurring line of a poem. 

You were done being hopeless / You were done / You were done / You were done being hopeless. 

I said goodbye and it wasn’t enough, one word. Too quotidian to contain the end of the world. But it was all there was. 

I hesitated over it for a moment, trying to assimilate the new and extraordinary pain of a message that begins with “Hi” and your name when it comes from somebody you used to be married to. 

There are things, crimes in a marriage that are so great, you cannot apologize for them. Instead, watching television on the sofa, eating the dinner he made while you showered after the hospital, you say “Patrick?” “Yes?” “I like this sauce”

Being sad is, like writing a funny food column, something I can do anywhere. 

It had been so much effort telling myself and making myself believe that coming back from a honeymoon is when marriages start, not when they end. 

It is hard to look into someone’s eyes. Even when you love them, it is difficult to sustain it, for the sense of being seen through—in some way, found out—but for as long as the kiss had lasted, I didn’t feel guilty for saying “yes” and being so happy when I had just taken something away from Patrick so that I could have what I wanted. 

Insanity, he said, is not a dealbreaker if it’s you. 

She doesn’t want to be let go. People letting her go has become a theme. For once, she would like to be detained. 

Because when suffering is unavoidable, the only thing one gets to choose is the backdrop.

Patrick’s sameness seemed to collapse time until none had passed, nothing had happened, and it was just the two of us picking up bits of bowl. 

Things I had acquired while Jonathan and I were together, things that I’d owned before, now poisoned by some association with him. 

The distance between us had been diminishing all the time we had been talking, and once it became nothing—once he was whispering against my face—letting him kiss me felt like a continuation of our progress towards each other. Then letting him take my phone number, and the next day, letting him take me to dinner.

A compulsively readable debut novel—spiky, sharp, intriguingly dark, and tender—about a woman on the edge that combines the psychological insight of Sally Rooney with the sharp humor of Nina Stibbe and the emotional resonance of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine.

Martha Friel just turned forty. Once, she worked at Vogue and planned to write a novel. Now, she creates internet content. She used to live in a pied-à-terre in Paris. Now she lives in a gated community in Oxford, the only person she knows without a PhD, a baby or both, in a house she hates but cannot bear to leave. But she must leave, now that her husband Patrick—the kind who cooks, throws her birthday parties, who loves her and has only ever wanted her to be happy—has just moved out.

Because there's something wrong with Martha, and has been for a long time. When she was seventeen, a little bomb went off in her brain and she was never the same. But countless doctors, endless therapy, every kind of drug later, she still doesn't know what's wrong, why she spends days unable to get out of bed or alienates both strangers and her loved ones with casually cruel remarks.

And she has nowhere to go except her childhood home: a bohemian (dilapidated) townhouse in a romantic (rundown) part of London—to live with her mother, a minorly important sculptor (and major drinker) and her father, a famous poet (though unpublished) and try to survive without the devoted, potty-mouthed sister who made all the chaos bearable back then, and is now too busy or too fed up to deal with her.

But maybe, by starting over, Martha will get to write a better ending for herself—and she'll find out that she's not quite finished after all.

Gelaine Trinidad

Erin G.

My first Goop Book Club read, listened to the audiobook. Absolutely loved how realistic the relationships between the characters felt, a classic messy family dynamic but also totally unique. Definitely see this being optioned for a movie adaptation that won't do it justice.

armoni mayes

If you are a fan of Sally Rooney's novel  Normal People  and Ottessa Mosfegh's  My Year of Rest and Relaxation  I believe you would enjoy this novel. 

We follow a 40-year-old woman named Martha in the present and past events that led her to where she is today. Martha has uncontrollable outbursts that cause rifts in her family and romantic relationships that had all been chalked up to depression. This book discusses motherhood and mental illness, and what can happen when a person is misdiagnosed or undiagnosed. 

It is not plot-heavy, mainly a character study. I did enjoy this novel but maybe not as much as I would have hoped to. It felt like it started to really drag in some places, but like I said, definitely not plot-heavy. 

Some quotes that I liked:

 When people discover that you and your husband were separated for a time but have since reconciled, they put their head on the side and say, “Clearly you never stopped loving him deep down.” But I did. I know I did. It is easier to say yes, you’re so right, because it is too much work to explain to them that you can stop and start again from nothing, that you can love the same person twice.

[...] every time somebody in a book wanted something, I wrote down what it was. Once I had finished them all, I had so many torn-off bits of paper, collected in a jar on Ingrid’s dresser. But they all said, a person, a family, a home, money, to not be alone. That is all anybody wants.

I said I am so sorry. “I’m the worst person in the world.” “No you’re not.” Patrick’s hand came down in a fist and he hit the arm of the sofa. “You’re not the best person in the world either, which is what you really think. You’re the same as everybody else. But that’s harder for you, isn’t it. You’d rather be one or the other. The idea you might be ordinary is unbearable.”

azliana aziz

toast for the times you have of other people saying you're a difficult person and you think (know) it's true too. arching, raw honesty in the absorbing interiority of the protagonist made this book engrossing while pinching your heart bit by bit.

syadrina

it's me, hi, i am martha, it's me.

(i love that this book shows the willingness that needs to be taken when one wants to heal. it emphasizes that someone who struggles with mental issues also needs to slowly cultivate their self-awareness, even though it may take longer times, or one may need to be battered first by the harsh reality that, at the end of the day, we indeed only have ourselves. throughout this book, i have liked, hated, and sympathized with martha, and i feel sad upon realizing that she is not some real living person in this world as i finished the last pages. i also think the author's choice of not naming the main character's condition and referring to it only with two dashes is quite brilliant, showing the carefulness of not portraying a certain mental illness stereotypically and inaccurately.)

lexie

what the fuck. 'But the thing about labels is, they're very useful when they're right because then you don't give yourself wrong ones, like difficult or insane, or psychotic or a bad wife' I don't know what to say.

I think this will remain one of my favourite fictions ever.

Andrea Hak-Kovacs

"Sorrow and Bliss" falls within the genre of stories about difficult women, flawed human beings, who are defined by their sadness and messiness. It has been prevalent in literary fiction for a past couple of years, particularly focusing on millennial women, but successful executions have been few and far. "Sorrow and Bliss" is one of those few.

The novel details the decades long mental health struggle of a woman (now in her 40s) with an undefined mental illness (later on referred as '-' in print, or 'X' in the audiobook), its impact on her life and her relationships and the stigma associated with her condition. Seeing the main character's self-destructive behaviour frustrating but one cannot help but root for her regardless - the book is empathetic like that.

But I do recognise that I may have liked this better than other similar books as it resonated deeply with me.

"Sorrow and Bliss" falls within the genre of stories about difficult women, flawed human beings, who are defined by their sadness and messiness. It has been prevalent in literary fiction for a past couple of years, particularly focusing on millennial women, but successful executions have been few and far. "Sorrow and Bliss" is one of those few.

The novel details the decades long mental health struggle of a woman (now in her 40s) with an undefined mental illness (later on referred as '-' in print, or 'X' in the audiobook), its impact on her life and her relationships and the stigma associated with her condition. Seeing the main character's self-destructive behaviour frustrating but one cannot help but root for her regardless - the book is empathetic like that.

But I do recognise that I may have liked this better than other similar books as it resonated deeply with me.

Wow wow wow. Wildly human, emotional, beautiful, melancholic, and tender all at once. 

 this book until about 2/3 through, some of the plot decisions didn’t sit right with me.

Molly Bridge

So readable. I loved this book until about 2/3 through, some of the plot decisions didn’t sit right with me.

Joana da Silva

This book, oh my god, this book. I bought it on a whim months ago because the story seemed interesting and I was into reading about despair, then proceeded to leave it gathering digital dust on my Kobo until now. I hate people who say things like 'I read it before the hype', 'I knew about it first', blablabla, but I am quite proud of having been one of the people who bought this book before the hype because it makes me feel better about my instincts that so often lead me to the shittiest books on earth. 
That aside, this book is a MUST READ and I will hold on to it for life. All of the characters are so well constructed, and the relationships have real depth and complexities. I hadn't been able to really step into a character's shoes so easily like this in a long time. This book captivates in a beautiful way the struggle of mental illnesses, the importance of a diagnosis, and what it can do to the people around. GO AND READ THIS BOOK!

Incredibly honest emotional roller coaster where everyone is flawed and that’s very much okay. 

Chris Mock

❤️ a book hasn’t made me cry like that in a long time. a fucking delight.

melancholy, a little maniacal, cozy, heartwarming and heart wrenching. mental illness, marriage, relationships, dysfunction, a great love, playful observation, british. everything one needs. 

i loved the settings, i grew attached to the characters, loved their complexities, loved the dry tone and dark humor as always, the internal monologue, i laughed out loud, i ugly cried. the pacing in story and character development was near perfect and at times perfectly compulsive.

through the first half i thought i might give it a 4 or 4.5, but as the story matured through the second half, i was won over.

i listened to this because i’m too busy to sit down with books as much i’d like to right now. the british narrator did a really wonderful job, but i will be buying this and re-reading and sitting with it. i’d watch this over and over if it were a movie.

Kat Albanese

❤️ a book hasn’t made me cry like that in a long time. a fucking delight.

fleabag but a tad less crude. 

melancholy, a little maniacal, cozy, heartwarming and heart wrenching. mental illness, marriage, relationships, dysfunction, a great love, playful observation, british. everything one needs. 

i loved the settings, i grew attached to the characters, loved their complexities, loved the dry tone and dark humor as always, the internal monologue, i laughed out loud, i ugly cried. the pacing in story and character development was near perfect and at times perfectly compulsive.

through the first half i thought i might give it a 4 or 4.5, but as the story matured through the second half, i was won over.

i listened to this because i’m too busy to sit down with books as much i’d like to right now. the british narrator did a really wonderful job, but i will be buying this and re-reading and sitting with it. i’d watch this over and over if it were a movie.

when i said i wanted a literary version of the insurmountable delight and dread fleabag gives me, this book rlly showed up to complete that assignment. don't cry much, i don't think, but i put this down maybe twice to have a good sob, so yeah

anarh

I've been bamboozled. All the great stuff everyone said was not the true in my case. I've never wanted to slap more a main character. She was selfish, self-centered, lacked empathy, chose partners for all the wrong reasons. The only joy I got was when the mc's mother basically told her the above. I felt sorry for her husband and I rarely feel sorry for men, fictional or real. 

The writing was straight to the point, no bullshit, which I liked. This was one of my favorite quotes:

„Looking back, it is unlikely our mother knew them either – the object of her parties seemed to be filling the house with extraordinary strangers and being extraordinary in front of them, and not a person who used to live above a key-cutter. It was not enough to be extraordinary to the three of us.“

Jovana Gjekanovikj 

I've been bamboozled. All the great stuff everyone said was not the true in my case. I've never wanted to slap more a main character. She was selfish, self-centered, lacked empathy, chose partners for all the wrong reasons. The only joy I got was when the mc's mother basically told her the above. I felt sorry for her husband and I rarely feel sorry for men, fictional or real. 

The writing was straight to the point, no bullshit, which I liked. This was one of my favorite quotes:

„Looking back, it is unlikely our mother knew them either – the object of her parties seemed to be filling the house with extraordinary strangers and being extraordinary in front of them, and not a person who used to live above a key-cutter. It was not enough to be extraordinary to the three of us.“

Reminds me of „a year of rest and relaxations“ though i find sorrow and bliss way more inspiring and beautiful. 

Celine

Everyone tells Martha Friel she is clever and beautiful, a brilliant writer who has been loved every day of her adult life by one man, her husband Patrick. A gift, her mother once said, not everybody gets.

So why is everything broken? Why is Martha – on the edge of 40 – friendless, practically jobless and so often sad? And why did Patrick decide to leave?

Maybe she is just too sensitive, someone who finds it harder to be alive than most people. Or maybe – as she has long believed – there is something wrong with her. Something that broke when a little bomb went off in her brain, at 17, and left her changed in a way that no doctor or therapist has ever been able to explain.

Forced to return to her childhood home to live with her dysfunctional, bohemian parents (but without the help of her devoted, foul-mouthed sister Ingrid), Martha has one last chance to find out whether a life is ever too broken to fix – or whether, maybe, by starting over, she will get to write a better ending for herself.

Siya S

In one word: Fleabag. 




  And you have been loved for all your adult life by one man. That is a gift not many people get, and his stubborn, persistent love isn't in spite of you and your pain. It is because of who you are which is, in part, a product of your pain.

I liked this more than I thought I would. Surprise, surprise. The first half has a lot of unexpected dry, witty, sarcastic humour that made me laugh out loud to myself while driving to work (I sometimes listened to it as an audiobook). The second half, however, was rather poignant and depressing with a tinge of hopefulness around the end. 

Meg Mason has her way with words and I enjoyed her writing throughout. I think she has created something that I could see being turned into an Amazon prime miniseries of sorts, due to its self-deprecating nature and the poignancy that generates discussions on stigmatized topics (mental illness, having babies, being a woman). 

Character-wise, I didn't like Martha, but I appreciated her as a character because she was a perfect vessel to voice such eloquent descriptions of emotive responses to her struggle with an unnamed mental illness. The supporting characters were actually one of the stronger elements of this book. Martha's relationship with her father was nothing short of heartwarming. 

I liked Patrick and Ingrid so much that I was pissed off at Martha even more for treating them like trashcans for most of her adult life. I also enjoyed Peregrine's presence and even found myself appreciating Winsome and Celia as well by the end. Speaking of which, while Martha was dully complex and unlikeable (in terms of: she really needed her privileges checked) most of the time, I think that's actually also kind of the point. 

Full review after I have a book club discussion with my bookish pals.

This was a mixed experience to me while I can see how this is a critically acclaimed novel mainly due to the author’s clever wit and nuance in eloquently writing a character even though our main character is anything but eloquent.

The sole emotion I kept feeling while reading this is painful sadness and pity (except the ending). I just kept feeling sorry for Martha. I truly think the saving grace of this novel was those last chapters, the most perfect ending possible.

I couldn’t get into the humor, and this objective opinion did impact the rating.

 If you like character driven novels that involve sad monologues and 

 type of humor then you’ll like this one.

Jawahir M

This was a mixed experience to me while I can see how this is a critically acclaimed novel mainly due to the author’s clever wit and nuance in eloquently writing a character even though our main character is anything but eloquent.

The sole emotion I kept feeling while reading this is painful sadness and pity (except the ending). I just kept feeling sorry for Martha. I truly think the saving grace of this novel was those last chapters, the most perfect ending possible.

I couldn’t get into the humor, and this objective opinion did impact the rating.

Do I recommend? If you like character driven novels that involve sad monologues and Fleabag type of humor then you’ll like this one.

Tess McMahon

I love reading books written by journalists because they are often so well-written. Meg Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss is no exception. 

This book is a raw story about mental illness, marriage, family and motherhood. It’s sad, darkly funny and acutely observant. Martha is an unlikeable protagonist, yet this is done in a way that doesn’t put you off following her story. 

Mason’s writing has been compared to Sally Rooney and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, but she also has a very original voice. An example of how Mason brings humour from the perspective of a woman who suffers from depression: 

“I chose one that was inexplicably thick, with twice as many pages as its shelf mates, because it said, on the cover, You Should Just Go For It. It was meant to sound carefree and motivating but for want of an exclamation mark, it came across as weary and resigned. You Should Just Go For It. Everyone Is Sick Of Hearing You Talk About It. Follow Your Dreams. The Stakes Could Not Be Lower.”

I really enjoyed this book. I’m looking forward to seeing what Mason comes up with next.

Vivian

It is very difficult to like a novel when you find the main character utterly insufferable. And that was how I felt about Martha up until the last few pages of the book. 

Granted, Sorrow and Bliss strives to break down the mental illness stigma and focuses on the consequences and challenges of being misdiagnosed. But the story itself reeks of privileges and self-centeredness that I think rather than raising awareness it rather does a disservice. 

Martha suffered from an unnamed mental illness (I would guess schizophrenia) but was misdiagnosed until she was 40. It's undoubtedly terrible, but she also had a lot going for her - such as being intelligent and beautiful, financially supported by her parents and later husband throughout her life, lived in Paris rent-free for 4 years thanks to a generous friend, and having a husband who'd been secretly in love with her since he was 14 (cue Rachel for Ross in Friends) - which I doubt your average mentally-ill person is entitled to. Even when she was finally properly diagnosed, received treatment and got better (one appointment and some tablets and she was cured! Can you even believe for god’s sake), Martha still operated under the victim mentality where everything was everybody else's fault, and everyone should strive to accommodate her every need because she was the sick one. Oh poor Patrick, I really felt for her husband, not her. Towards the very end, I still saw very little redemption or grown-up on her end. 

Imagine, if the main character were a man, and has mentally and physically abused his wife for years while living off her salary, how many readers would still give it a five star? The book was also poorly executed with an apparent lack of medical knowledge that upholds stigma rather than dismantles it. 

I genuinely do not get the hype. I guess I'm just not the target audience for this book.

Kuba Milcarz

Touching and depressing story. Very captivating. I loved how Meg wrote dialogues without ‘’. I don’t know why but I very much loved it haha. Ok moving on. I think the plot has good pacing, characters had their motives and felt realistic.

Victoria Justice

Sorrow and Bliss is a contempory novel that follows Martha, who having just separated from her husband, is forced to reflect on her life, in particular her mental health, and the affect this has had on her decisions and her relationships with those around her, including herself.

Meg Mason's writing style is so easy to read. She has taken a complex subject that should be hard to digest, and written about it so gracefully that you just glide your way through.

While I found Martha to be irritating at times, I think this was because I related to her character in so many small ways, that my own irritation at myself was reflected onto her. In particular her "pity parties", and how she ignored the affect they had on those closest to her, got frustrating as they happened time and time again.

However, Martha's diagnosis is never actually named throughout the novel, which I found to be so refreshingly clever. By not naming Martha's mental health, this allows the point of the novel to shine through, namely, that no matter what mental health condition a person is diagnosed with, mental health is something that everyone has experience with; the ripple effect a person diagnosed with a mental health condition has on those people around them. With choosing not to name Martha's mental health condition, this allows her diagnosis to be relatable to more people, as they can label her condition with the mental health condition they have the most experience with.

Sorrow and Bliss is a funny, reflective, and agonisingly honest novel, one which I see myself coming back to at some point to enjoy again and again.

Sorrow and Bliss

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