AustLit

'Sorrow and Bliss is a book you’ll want to devour in a sitting. Meg Mason has written an adult coming-of-age novel told with force, breathlessness and a confessional style that makes you feel as if you’re sharing intimacies with a close friend. It may be read as a story of an unhappy marriage, or a story of a dysfunctional family, or perhaps most of all a story of mental illness – and it is all those things – but at its core this book is about a woman trying to understand herself and find a way to live.'  (Introduction)

'In the hands of its acerbic narrator – dealing with a crushing mental illness – even the darkest material is handled lightly, and is all the more powerful for it.' 

'For a protagonist that is self-professedly unlikeable, Martha commands attention – and is likeable. In Meg Mason’s tragicomedy Sorrow and Bliss, Martha navigates living with an undiagnosed mental illness. The novel solidifies Mason’s thematic preoccupations by revisiting those of her previous works: as in her memoir Say It Again in a Nice Voice (2012) and her first novel, You Be Mother (2017), the power of female relationships, loneliness, and the bleak humour of motherhood are apparent.' (Introduction)