Fabulous Fiction Firsts #806

Sat, 05/28/2022 - 1:11pm by muffy

The winner of the 2022 Women’s Prize in Fiction AND The British Book Awards’ Book of the Year in Fiction, Sorrow and Bliss, * *  Meg Mason’s  U.S. debut, (also in downloadable eBook and audiobook), is at once “spiky, sharp, intriguingly dark, and tender.”

40-year-old Martha Friel, clever and beautiful, and once a brilliant writer, is now semi-employed, creating internet content. Once she lived in Paris but is now ensconced in an “executive estate”, a gated community in Oxford, where as far as she knows, she might be the only person without a PhD, a baby or both. And now that her husband Patrick decides to leave her, Martha is forced to return to her childhood home with her self-involved bohemian/artists parents where at 17, “a little bomb went off in her brain”, leaving her subject to rage, depression, suicidal impulses, and decades of what she sees as one useless medication after another. 

“Exploring the multifaceted hardships of mental illness and the frustrating inaccuracy of diagnoses, medications, and treatments, Sorrow and Bliss is darkly comic and deeply heartfelt. Much like the narrator of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Martha's voice is acerbic, witty, and raw…. Mason plots Martha's story in a nonlinear fashion, largely working backwards to highlight the highest and lowest points of her life.” (Booklist) 

“An incredibly funny and devastating debut. . . . enlivened, often, by a madcap energy. Yet it still manages to be sensitive and heartfelt, and to offer a nuanced portrayal of what it means to try to make amends and change, even when that involves 'start[ing] again from nothing.'” (The Guardian)

Will appeal to fans of Sally Rooney, Maria Semple, Lily King, and Ruth Hogan. Readers might also want to check out 10 Books To Read for Mental Health Awareness Month.

 * *  = 2 starred reviews