In a strikingly different ethical arrangement of the reader/writer contract (sorry, went all academic there for a second but it’s that kind of book), the woman is given a diagnosis but this is not shared with the reader. This is a story of Martha, a woman with a mental illness that renders her totally dysfunctional for months at a time. You listen, hoping your undivided attention might make a difference.

But it soon becomes clear that there’s more going on than the usual friend-going-through-a-blue-patch. Sure, boy meets girl, but God, she’s complicated! The poor bastard! This is a woman-to-woman story and telling it like it is, working things out, a woman being honest about her emotional shortcomings in a way that makes it feel a privilege for the reader to be told. This is a novel hard to categorise there’s not your usual plot-line running through the story. ‘The Germans have a word for heartbreak, Martha. There are words and descriptions to admire all thorough this book. Facing him, the posture felt beseeching and I put one foot back on the floor.’ How wonderful is that complicated word– beseeching, and how perfectly it describes this character. I sat down and folded my legs underneath me. Mason says: ‘He was sitting at one end of the sofa. A lesser author might tell you that a couple sat on sofa and she felt awkward. The author uses her vocabulary well and can summon up a hundred ways to describe ‘awkward’. Sorrow and Bliss is a lively and intelligent book.

Sorrow and bliss book review