Reviews with content warning for Suicide - Sorrow and Bliss

I almost didn’t finish the book. It didn’t feel like a good representation of mental illness, and it crawled at a snails pace. But those last 100 pages hit me like a ton of bricks.
I’m 24, and I worried I wouldn’t be able to identify with Martha. I was so very wrong: Mason tells her story from 17 on, sometimes capturing exactly how it feels to live with mental illness. How it affects relationships and how working hard at being normal-adjacent is. If you read this, know that the ending, however open ended it is, is worth it

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frillsnspills's review against another edition

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5.0

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unfiltered_fiction's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Sorrow and Bliss is an incisive and compelling novel that attains both literary excellence and social intelligence.

The book tells the story of Martha, an almost-forty year old woman who seems to have almost everything, and yet suffers a deep, devastating, immobilising unhappiness. As the history of her adult life unravels through flashbacks, the book gets darker and heavier as it opens up a life lived with acute and poorly supported mental illness.

The story is told from Martha's perspective, and I have to say that this is one of the best examples of first person narration that I've read in a good while. The world is filtered through Martha's perspective in an incredibly sustained manner, playing with the "unreliable narrator" trope I an incredibly clever way. This results ultimately in immaculate character work, but can occasionally make the narrative structure seem disjointed. In addition, it embitters some of the prose, throwing unpleasant barbs at various secondary characters; as a reader, you need to be prepared to encounter Martha's cruelty and shallowness, but know that there is ultimately a reason and trust that this acerbic emotion will be dealt with.

There were a few minor points that just held this short of being a five star read for me; mostly, I wanted to see another few months of Martha's journey. I especially wanted a continuation of the dynamic between Martha and her mother in the last 50 pages.

This is an exhausting book, in some ways; it captures the atrophic exhaustion caused by recurring episodes of mental illness, and that can make for hard reading. Ultimately, though, persistence will be rewarded. It is a rare book which increases in value with every single chapter; with Martha's story, Meg Mason achieves this.

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ggreen's review against another edition

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emotional funny reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.5

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andthenweread's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

i don’t know how i feel about this book! for starters, it was definitely an emotional rollercoaster. i felt myself constantly wavering between feeling sorry for martha and being incredibly frustrated with her, and i kept thinking about how patient the people in her life were (especially ingrid and patrick; poor patrick!).

i can’t say i loved this book—the slow pace at the start and back-and-forth timeline threw me off, at times the story’s events felt too outrageous or exaggerated to be realistic, and martha was honestly an infuriating character because i couldn’t really understand her. but, once i got about halfway through reading, i didn’t want to stop until i’d finished, and once i turned the last page i felt like i’d done something large, like running a mile or having a big cry.

sorrow and bliss was an experience for sure (probably rife with topics for a book club discussion, too), and i can say now that i understand what all the online buzz was about.

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angebrown's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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laurenpolitylo's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Really beautiful book about metal illness that is realistic, but also hopeful. Witty thoughts

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chloeeereads's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Sorrow and Bliss is an anti-love love story with a widely unreliable and ultimately unlikeable narrator, Martha. Martha’s moods are like a severe weather system - unpredictable chaos and darkness with interspersed periods of questionable calm. Her whole life, Martha has been fiercely loved by those around her - her parents, her sister, and her childhood crush turned husband. But she has never felt normal, and it’s not until she nears her 40th birthday that she starts to properly understand why.

This was not your average story about a woman with depression. Yes, it provided a bleak insight into the realities of living with a mental illness and trying to navigate life and love and relationships. But it was also funny and witty and littered with sarcasm and humour. I enjoyed how well Mason wrote about the tumultuous nature of mental illness, and the intricacies of trying to survive day by day when all you want to do is stop existing. I related to Martha’s experiences so much, and the inner monologue/narrative style of writing made me, as a person who has struggled with mental illness but also just as an intrigued reader, feel so connected to Martha.

This was not a heavily plot focused story, but mainly focused on Martha as a person, a woman, a sister, a daughter, a friend, and a wife. She’s a hard character to like and she does some awful things, but by the end of the book you can’t help but understand her and you are left with a glimpse of hope - not hope that things are automatically better, but hope that things will start to improve bit by bit, and hope that maybe you might start to enjoy living a little more.

Definitely recommend this one!

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