I said maybe it was the lighting, or the fact they were always carpeted, the higher than usual concentration of people eating alone, maybe it was just the concept of an omelette station that made me question the meaning of everything.”Īs well as Moore, Jenny Offill is another writer who comes to mind both stylistically and tonally. “Out loud, because I had nothing else to do, I analysed the particular pathos of hotel restaurants. Our sympathies lie at all times with Martha in this brilliant rendering of a troubled, confused woman who can behave atrociously to the people she loves Mason mines the situation for humour, from her mother’s “permanent sign on the door that said ‘GIRLS: before knocking, ask self – is something on fire?’ to her character description: “Now that she is essentially spherical, the impression is of many blankets thrown haphazardly over a birdcage.”
That Celia, an alcoholic sculptor, is giving her daughter good advice comes as a surprise, following decades of erratic, neglectful treatment. An epigrammatic style also lends itself to graceful shifts in time: “One day, years later, my mother would tell me that no marriage makes sense to the outside world because, she would say, a marriage is its own world.” The pacing is exemplary, the ups and downs of Martha’s life giving a natural flow to the narrative. What follows is a look back through Martha’s life from late teens onwards, a deep dive into a chaotic, troubled family whose love for each other ultimately cuts through the darkness. The plot centres on Martha Friel, an Englishwoman approaching 40 whose marriage to her long-suffering husband, Patrick, has recently come to an end. Sharp, stylish and revelatory, this novel is sure to be one of the big success stories of the year. It is that rarest of things, a book that a professional reviewer doesn’t want to end. The title Sorrow and Bliss is entirely fitting for a book that skilfully charts the life of a woman living with mental illness, her days spent treading the fine line between humour and despair.
This is the driving force of Meg Mason’s stellar new novel. Sometimes the funniest people are the saddest.
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