Oh, Martha...

Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason

One of the strangest and most anxiety-producing things I regularly do has to be picking a new book to read.

I scan the shelves, pull out a few and read the first couple of pages. It’s hard to know what you’re in the mood for, what book is really gonna speak to you. And I am crippled by the possibility that I’ll pick the wrong one.

It was a Friday night like any other, my fiance was working out in our living-room/gym, and I was settling in for a night on the couch. I had my cats, I had my tea, I had my water bottle – all I needed was a good book.

Knowing I wasn’t in the mood for horror I skipped over the Stephen King pile, moving on to the ‘classics’ shelf, but nothing jumped out. Completely ignoring the non-fiction for obvious reasons (no one has ever snuggled up for an evening of escapism with a non-fiction book). I read the first few pages of Jennifer Egan’s ‘A Visit From The Goon Squad’, but it wasn’t quite right. ‘Horse’ by Geraldine Brooks was closer. Maybe it’s time for a ‘Hunger Games’ re-read? As I am currently unable to buy myself the new prequel.

But then a tattered-broken-spined book caught my eye. I think I rescued it from a free little library sometime last year, ‘Sorrow and Bliss’ by Meg Mason was calling to me.

Now, I had heard good things of this 2022 release, but I couldn’t remember exactly who had said them, or what exactly they’d said. But I took a punt, as you often have to do.

And boy, am I glad I did.

For the next four days I was completely consumed by this book. The fractious mind of our narrator Martha ensnared my own. The anguish, the fraught reality of human suffering was so beautifully and perfectly laid bare. I found myself interrupting the fiancé’s workout, reading passages to him as he looked at me quizzically clearly taking none of it in.

‘Sorrow and Bliss’ is the story of a woman’s undoing, the slow and steady decline of a life when racked by the pain of a misdiagnosed mental illness. Everyone around her seems to just find her difficult or erratic, unwilling to see the seriousness of her suffering. Martha takes us back through her life, from her discordant family to her first unsuccessful marriage and then to her second. Patrick loves her, has loved her since they were teenagers, but still Martha finds life with him unbearable, when really she just finds life to be unbearable.

Martha’s relationship with her sister is truly beautiful. They share a love unlike any I have known. And it’s beautiful to get so see it. The strange, perfect, horrible mess of sisterly love – of your soulmate being your sister, not your lover. Martha’s father also had a special place in my heart. He was a sensitive poet who loved the women around him so tenderly. It is evident in his vigilant care of Martha. His love is the kind that any of us would be honoured to experience.

Reading this book was hard. It felt that in many ways it hit a little too close to home. But it also felt essential. The revelation of a correct diagnosis, one shared with her alcoholic artist mother who kept it from her, changes everything for Martha. Not only is she given the correct medication, but also she is given hope. It’s not that Martha is somehow broken; it is that she is ill and there is a chance for her to get better. Mason cleverly never names the specific mental illness that plagues our narrator. Instead it is represented as ‘—‘. As frustrating as I found this, I understand not naming it. Whatever the mental illness is, is simply not the point. The profound affect it has had on Martha and her life is.

The climax and conclusion of this book is a little unsatisfying. The reader is denied the knowledge that sets Martha free, and things don’t really get fixed. But they get better, little by little. Martha repairs some fractured relationships and is able to confront her own loss in never having children (something she believed impossible due to the medication she had been prescribed her whole life). Patrick and Martha make amends, and begin to try again. Although I don’t really know if that’s something that I’d wish for her. The ending feels like a beginning. A closing of one chapter and the opening of another.

And isn’t that so much like life? Endings are rarely the end. They are just the transformation from one thing into another.

Life is tricky like that, it’s always changing.