4.25/5

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.

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.”

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.

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.)

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.

"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.

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

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.

❤️ 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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

3.5