However, in reality the family is poor, surviving mainly through the patronage of Martha's aunt, Winsome - a dependency that causes resentment and tensions. On the surface, this makes for a romantic, bohemian childhood spent in a run-down London townhouse, where her mother throws extravagant parties full of creative and interesting people. She comes from a household of artists - her mother is a "minorly important" sculptor and her father is a poet who, though once called the male Sylvia Plath, hasn't published anything since he was 19. The novel also provides a colorful cast of secondary characters in the form of Martha's family, who are fleshed out in recollections of her youth. The precision of Mason's description elevates otherwise mundane scenes into something that feels extraordinary. The author also draws striking attention to the delicate, transitory details of everyday life - Martha appreciates, for example, the way a passing cloud makes the light flicker on her sister's face, and the way the veins in her husband's hands bulge as he grips the steering wheel. Whilst the book's content is not exactly ground-breaking, its sharp comedy makes it feel fresh. Her pithy, deadpan comments fly like sparks from the page. Mason has imbued Martha with a glittering intelligence, laser-like powers of observation and a deliciously bone-dry sense of humor. Written with wit and compassion, Sorrow and Bliss recounts Martha's attempt to sift through the debris of her life in order to gain some understanding of herself and to seek out the source of her damage.
When he eventually leaves her, it isn't exactly a shock, but the event causes her to reflect on everything that has led up to this final blow. She rebuffs his incessant cheerfulness with small cruelties, pushing him further and further away. The pain is causing her to lash out at her husband, Patrick. Now she is middle-aged, and a resurgent wave of that same illness is threatening to wipe her out. When she was 17, "a little bomb went off" in her brain - a sudden, violent onset of mental illness that has characterized her life ever since. A sharply funny and poignant reflection on the experience of living with mental illness.Īt the opening of Meg Mason's Sorrow and Bliss, Martha's marriage is disintegrating.
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