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evergreensandbookishthings 's review for:
Sorrow & Bliss
by Meg Mason
Thank you, @bibliolifestyle @harperperennial for the review copy of Sorrow and Bliss!
“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. As soon as you think that’s it, it’s going to be like this forever, they change again.”
To me, Mason’s book felt reminiscent of my other beloved UK writers like JoJo Moyes, Marian Keyes, and Helen Fielding: novels that usually center around a loveable, but extremely flawed, main character with a big family presence and an abundance of colorful supporting characters. With compulsively readable bite size chapters and exquisite dry British humor, I flew through the pages with an aching heart, but more often with tears of laughter - despite the ever present and heavy subject of mental illness. The exchanges between Martha and her sister Ingrid are *chef’s kiss* perfection in the comedic ways we interact with those closest to us.
This novel stands out among its contemporaries with a unique structure as it weaves back and forth in time, seeming to start at the end, and slowly reveals the heart of the matter with Martha. At first, I felt frustrated by the narrator’s elusive nature in revealing information. But it is absolutely necessary to understanding her plight, and the last 75 pages or so of this book were revelatory. Not only in the literal sense of the plot, which were page turning, but also the way in which the author communicates the struggles of mental illness. REVELATORY.
It’s one of those books that when I finished it, I immediately wondered if it is autobiographical. Martha’s interior world is so vivid in its intimacy. I was blown away. Just… Slow clap for a beautifully written book I wanted to hug when I was done.
“…I hadn’t known you could choose how to feel instead of being overpowered by an emotion from outside yourself. I said I couldn’t explain it properly. I didn’t feel like a different person, I felt like myself. As though I had been found.”
“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. As soon as you think that’s it, it’s going to be like this forever, they change again.”
To me, Mason’s book felt reminiscent of my other beloved UK writers like JoJo Moyes, Marian Keyes, and Helen Fielding: novels that usually center around a loveable, but extremely flawed, main character with a big family presence and an abundance of colorful supporting characters. With compulsively readable bite size chapters and exquisite dry British humor, I flew through the pages with an aching heart, but more often with tears of laughter - despite the ever present and heavy subject of mental illness. The exchanges between Martha and her sister Ingrid are *chef’s kiss* perfection in the comedic ways we interact with those closest to us.
This novel stands out among its contemporaries with a unique structure as it weaves back and forth in time, seeming to start at the end, and slowly reveals the heart of the matter with Martha. At first, I felt frustrated by the narrator’s elusive nature in revealing information. But it is absolutely necessary to understanding her plight, and the last 75 pages or so of this book were revelatory. Not only in the literal sense of the plot, which were page turning, but also the way in which the author communicates the struggles of mental illness. REVELATORY.
It’s one of those books that when I finished it, I immediately wondered if it is autobiographical. Martha’s interior world is so vivid in its intimacy. I was blown away. Just… Slow clap for a beautifully written book I wanted to hug when I was done.
“…I hadn’t known you could choose how to feel instead of being overpowered by an emotion from outside yourself. I said I couldn’t explain it properly. I didn’t feel like a different person, I felt like myself. As though I had been found.”