![]() So, even when we later move through the delicious anticipation of their early will-they-won’t-they moments and the sweetness of Patrick’s quiet devotion, we know that this rose-tinted optimism will always end in separation. Even before we travel back through Martha’s life, we learn at the very beginning of the novel that her marriage to Patrick has ended. But somehow, amid all this, what emerges is a story of love, in all its many forms.Īs its title suggests, Sorrow and Bliss is a continual layering of despair upon joy you’ll find it in the deep blue and sunny yellow of its front cover, in Martha’s dispassionate and moving narration, in the repeated prefacing of every happy moment with glimpses into a gloomier future. College, then work, then friends, then lovers are crushed into small, dark spaces by the all-consuming weight of spiralling darkness and isolation. In Sorrow and Bliss, Meg Mason’s funny, tender, sorrowful second novel, she tries to navigate life after the “little bomb” which explodes in her head when she is 17, expelling everything else. Martha Friel is the pretty daughter of a poet and a sculptor, a funny food column writer, adored by her husband Patrick since she was a teenager. ![]() Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason, longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2022. ![]()
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