Sorrow and Bliss

This richly spiced novel is a pleasure from the first page to the last... Its beautifully understated, airy style conceals the fiercest intelligence. I loved it so much that I stalked the author on social media - a first. Just read it. It's unforgettable. -- India Knight * SUNDAY TIMES CULTURE * The most wonderful, heartbreakingly gorgeous novel of the year. -- Elizabeth Day * THE MAIL ON SUNDAY, YOU MAGAZINE * It is impossible to read this novel and not be moved. It is also impossible not to laugh out loud... Mason pulls off something extraordinary in this huge-hearted novel, alchemising an unbearable anguish into something tender and hilarious and redemptive and wise, without ever undermining its gravity or diminishing its pain. -- Clare Clark * GUARDIAN * Inspired storytelling... a devastating and sharply funny love story... it is Martha's voice itself - her woeful deadpan narration always teetering between the comic, the tragic and the downright unlikable - that makes this novel sing. -- Julie Myerson * OBSERVER * Probably the best book you'll read this year... Brilliant, bleak, hilarious: the book of the summer. -- Natasha Poliszczuk * THE MAIL ON SUNDAY * Sorrow and Bliss, Meg Mason's first novel to be published in the UK, is as wonderful as everyone says it is. Blunt, tender, hilarious, and so very good on the trickiness of families, it is that rare perfect balance of fun (commercial) and difficult (literary), and exactly the book to read right now, when you need a laugh, but want to cry. -- Eva Wiseman * THE OBSERVER MAGAZINE * Summer's must-read novel... We can't recommend Sorrow And Bliss highly enough. -- Francesca Brown * STYLIST * A Fleabag-esque novel being raved about by Gillian Anderson and Ann Patchett... Expect this one to light up the WhatsApp chats. -- Louisa McGillicuddy * SUNDAY TIMES STYLE * You know that book that only comes along every so often, that seems to unite everyone who has read it in a sort of delirious fervour? Sorrow and Bliss is that book... It's utterly compelling and darkly funny: the book you have to read this summer. -- Jessie Thompson * EVENING STANDARD * Meg Mason has achieved something remarkable - Sorrow and Bliss is a raucously funny, beautifully written, emotionbashing book about love, family and life's curveballs that leaves you, satisfyingly, with what feels like wisdom forged in fire. -- Siobhan Murphy * THE TIMES * This is a story of mental illness reflected through the prism of an uproarious, big-hearted family comedy. It is fiercely intelligent and absolutely sublime. -- Anne Cunningham * IRISH INDEPENDENT * Rarely have the excoriating effects of mental illness been articulated quite so beautifully - as heartbreaking as it's funny, Sorrow And Bliss is one for the keeper shelves. -- Sarra Manning * RED MAGAZINE * Deeply moving but also darkly funny, Mason has created the sort of story that you savour the last pages of and long for once it's over. -- Olivia Ovenden * ESQUIRE * Completely brilliant, I loved it. I think every girl and woman should read it. * Gillian Anderson * Sorrow and Bliss is a brilliantly faceted and extremely funny book about depression that engulfed me in the way I'm always hoping to be to be engulfed by novels. While I was reading it, I was making a list of all the people I wanted to send it to, until I realized that I wanted to send it to everyone I know. * Ann Patchett * Sharp yet humane, and jaw-droppingly funny, this is the kind of novel you will want to press into the hands of everyone you know. Mason has an extraordinary talent for dialogue and character, and her understanding of how much poignancy a reader can take is profound. A masterclass on family, damage and the bonds of love: as soon as I finished it, I started again. * Jessie Burton * Sorrow and Bliss is a thing of beauty. Astute observations on marriage, motherhood, family, and mental illness are threaded through a story that is by turns devastating and restorative. Every sentence rings

MEG MASON began her journalism career at the Financial Times and The Times. Her work has since appeared in Vogue, Grazia, The Sunday Times, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Sunday Telegraph. She has written humour for the New Yorker, been a monthly columnist for GQ, a regular contributor to Vogue and Marie Claire and a contributing editor at Elle. She lives in Sydney with her husband and two daughters.