May 27

May 27 Sorrow and Bliss

Author: Meg Mason
Publisher: Harper
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

Martha Friel just turned forty. She used to work at Vogue and was going to write a novel. Now, she creates internet content for no one. She used to live in Paris. Now, she lives in a gated community in Oxford that she hates and can't bear to leave. But she must now that her loving husband Patrick has just left.

Because there's something wrong with Martha. There has been since a little bomb went off in her brain, at seventeen, leaving her changed in a way no doctor or drug could fix then and no one, even now, can explain--why can say she is so often sad, cruel to everyone she loves, why she finds it harder to be alive than other people.

With Patrick gone, the only place Martha has left to go is her childhood home, to live with her chaotic parents, to survive without Ingrid, the sister who made their growing-up bearable, who said she would never give up on Martha, and who finally has.

It feels like the end but maybe, by going back, Martha will get to start again. Maybe there is a different story to be written, if Martha can work out where to begin.

TL;DR Review

Sorrow and Bliss is a tough book to review. Some of the plot felt unoriginal. But even so, net positive overall from me, with especially strong character work.

For you if: You like character-driven, MFA-style contemporary novels.

Full Review

I read Sorrow and Bliss because it was shortlisted for the 2022 Women’s Prize. This one feels a little hard to review because parts of it were hit or miss for me, but overall, I liked it.

The story is narrated by a woman named Martha who has struggled with mental illness her whole life. We first meet her just after her husband left. She flashes back to the start of her mental illness, takes us through college and her 30s, first marriage and eventual second marriage, diagnosis after diagnosis and medication after medication. Then we learn what happened most recently and to damage her marriage, come back to where we started the story, and continue forward in time just a bit.

One thing I can absolutely put in the “good” category for this book is that it kept me reading. I needed to know how it would end. Also, Martha is an excellently written character, and her arc is executed insightfully and skillfully. Impressive writing stuff there. The not-so-good was that many of the plot points felt cliche, like things we’ve seen before. As my friend Bernie put it, “it was a well-written book of unoriginal ideas” (or, I’d say, mostly unoriginal; her experiences with mental illness did feel moving and important).

Bottom line, I’m glad I read it, but I wasn’t completely blown away. Still, if you tend to like character-driven, MFA-feeling contemporary fiction, I think you’ll find plenty to like in this one too.