Tag: contemporary fiction

#BookReview Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason

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Sorrow and BlissAbout the Book

Everyone tells Martha Friel she is clever and beautiful, a brilliant writer who has been loved every day of her adult life by one man, her husband Patrick.

So why is everything broken?

Maybe Martha is just someone who finds it harder to be alive than most people. Or maybe – as she has long believed – there is something wrong with her.

Forced to return to childhood home to live with her dysfunctional, bohemian parents (but without the help of her devoted, foul-mouthed sister Ingrid), Martha has one last chance to find out whether a life is ever too broken to fix – or whether, maybe, by starting over, she will get to write a better ending for herself.

Format: Paperback (347 pages)     Publisher: Wieldenfeld & Nicolson
Publication date: 28th April 2022 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

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My Review

This was the July pick for the book club run by Waterstones in Reading. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend the meeting but I suspect I may have been in the minority in finding myself rather underwhelmed by Sorrow and Bliss despite the many plaudits it has received, including being shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022.

There were elements I did enjoy such as the witty turns of phrase and Martha’s deadpan humour. ‘On holiday one year, I read Money, thirty pages of it until I remembered that I do not understand Martin Amis.’   I also enjoyed the cast of quirky characters. For example, Martha’s lovely father, an aspiring poet described as ‘a male Sylvia Plath’, Martha’s eccentric mother, Celia, ‘a ‘minorly important sculptor’ who makes art out of found objects or Martha’s sister, Ingrid, whose anecdotes are ‘a three-way combination of hyperbole, lies and factual inaccuracy’ but which are often outrageously funny albeit peppered with swear words. I also loved Martha’s friend Peregrine who treats her to lavish lunches.

So if I enjoyed all these things, why didn’t the book work for me? Mainly it was Martha herself. I tried, I really tried to like her or at least empathise with her mental turmoil but I never fully succeeded. Although she’s often funny, she makes consistently bad choices and comes across as needy, peevish and even cruel at times, alienating those close to her. I felt sorry for her husband Patrick the whole way through and found it hard to forgive the way she treats him. He demonstrates the patience of a saint, putting up with her erratic behaviour for longer than seems humanly possible. And what does he get in return? Accusations of passivity, dishonesty and betrayal.

However probably my biggest frustration with the book is that Martha is diagnosed with a mental condition that is never identified, just indicated by a series of dashes. The first time I came across it, I was just confused; then I became frustrated. Are we supposed to guess what it is or conclude the specifics don’t matter? What’s more this unnamed condition seems to be ‘cured’ in short order by a single medication. In the afterword, the author writes ‘The medical symptoms described in the novel are not consistent with a genuine mental illness. The portrayal of treatment, medication and doctors’ advice is wholly fictional’. Cop out or attempt not to get bogged down in trying to portray a specific mental condition?

There were moments in Sorrow and Bliss where I laughed out loud and I have to admit that, in Martha, the author has created a distinctive and memorable character, but there was just something missing for me. Perhaps if I’d been able to go to that book club meeting I might have discovered what it was and been able to look at the book in a new light.

In three words: Witty, dark, poignant

Meg MasonAbout the Author

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. (Photo: Goodreads author page)

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#BookReview The Martins by David Foenkinos

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The MartinsAbout the Book

‘Go out into the street and the first person you see will be the subject of your next book.’

This is the challenge a struggling Parisian writer sets himself, imagining his next heroine might be the mysterious young woman who often stands smoking near his apartment … instead it’s octogenarian Madeleine. She’s happy to become the subject of his book – but first she needs to put away her shopping.

Is it really true, the writer wonders, that every life is the stuff of novels, or is his story doomed to be hopelessly banal? As he gets to know Madeleine and her family, he’ll be privy to their secrets: lost loves, marital problems and workplace worries. And he’ll soon realise he is not the impartial bystander he intended to be, but a catalyst for major changes in the lives of his characters.

Format: Paperback (256 pages)    Publisher: Gallic Books
Publication date: 16th June 2022 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

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My Review

The Martins, translated from the French by Sam Taylor, is a gloriously playful book in which the author, in his role as narrator, takes plenty of self-deprecating swipes at himself and fellow writers. At one point he concedes that the comparison of a writer to a conman is pretty fair and later likens an author to a vampire in their thirst for the tragic elements of a story, observing ‘Let’s be honest, nobody is interested in happiness’.

Initially our narrator intends the subject of his book to be Madeleine, the elderly woman pulling a purple shopping trolley who invites him back for tea. When her daughter, Valerie, assures him (wrongly, as it turns out) that her mother’s memory is fading he becomes quite excited about the ways he could represent this in literary form, such as leaving blank pages or writing contradictory chapters.  Soon, however, he finds the scope of the book expanding to include not only Valerie but her husband Patrick, and their two children, Lola and Jérémie. He also begins to be drawn into the daily domestic life of the family, something he’s not entirely happy about, wondering if he’s ended up with the kind of ‘hackneyed’ characters he could have invented himself or that readers will find the book boring. He needn’t have worried because before long all sorts of events affect the family, in many cases provoked by his introduction into their life. (My favourite was Patrick and the curtains.) The narrator also finds attention turned on his own life.

The book is full of self referential humour. For example, the narrator constantly reminds himself he’s documenting the family’s lives not writing fiction and therefore mustn’t indulge in invention (two Poles says he does). I especially enjoyed the occasional footnotes containing witty asides, memos to himself (‘need to think about that phrase later’), notes recording ‘What I Know About My Characters’, and supplementary information (such as the definition of an aptronym). There’s also a list detailing possible reasons for the actions of one of the characters, the reader being invited to guess which will turn out to be correct. (I was wrong.)

The Martins is charming, funny and thoroughly entertaining.

My thanks to Isabelle at Gallic Books for my advance reading copy.

In three words: Witty, playful, engaging

Try something similar: Red Is My Heart by Antoine Laurain

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David FoenkinosAbout the Author

David Foenkinos was born in Paris in 1974. At the age of sixteen he spent several months in hospital due to a heart condition, and there discovered his love of reading.

He is the author of eighteen novels, which have been translated into more than forty languages. In 2009, sales of his novel Delicacy exceeded one million copies in France; Foenkinos and his brother directed the film adaptation, with Audrey Tautou playing the lead. Charlotte, his fictionalised biography of the young Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon, who was murdered at Auschwitz in 1943, was a finalist for the Prix Goncourt and won the Prix Reandout and the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens; it too sold over one million copies. His novel The Mystery of Henri Pick was adapted for the screen in France in 2018, with Fabrice Luchini and Camille Cottin in the lead roles.

Prior to becoming a writer, he studied jazz, and for a while taught guitar. He has two children, Alice and Victor, and lives in Paris. (Photo: Publisher author page)

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