Meg Mason

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTIONTHE BOOK EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT'Just read it. It's unforgettable'India Knight, The Sunday Times'It is impossible to read this novel and not be moved. It is also impossible not to laugh out loud... Extraordinary'Guardian'Full of snappy one-liners but, at the same time, remarkably poignant'Craig Brown'Probably the best book you'll read this year'Mail on Sunday

EVENING STANDARD'S 'BEST FICTION BOOKS TO LOOK FORWARD TO IN 2022'What do you do, when you find the perfect family......and it's not yours?'Rare and delightful . . . A beautifully crafted novel about female relationships. I couldn't put this book down'Marie ClaireThe only thing Abi ever wanted was a proper family. So when she falls pregnant by an Australian exchange student in London, she cannot pack up her old life in Croydon fast enough, to start all over in Sydney and make her own family.

Un premier roman addictif et piquant qui nous plonge dans la psyché dune femme sur le fil du rasoir. Sombre et tendre, Évidemment Martha conjugue la profondeur psychologique des romans de Sally Rooney a lhumour acere de Nina Stibbe ou de Phoebe Waller-Bridge.Quelque chose ne tourne pas rond chez Martha, et depuis longtemps. Lorsquelle avait dix-sept ans, une petite bombe a explose dans son cerveau et elle na plus jamais ete la meme. Et malgre toutes les consultations, therapies sans fin et traitements hasardeux, elle ne sait toujours pas ce qui ne va pas... Pourquoi passe-t-elle des journees entieres au fond de son lit ? Et pourquoi continue-t-elle a se mettre a dos des inconnus, et des proches, avec ses remarques cruelles et desinvoltes ?Aujourdhui, son mari la quittee et elle na plus nulle part ou aller, si ce nest dans la maison de son enfance, une maison boheme (delabree) dans un quartier romantique (delabre) de Londres. Et rien dautre a faire que retrouver sa mere, une sculptrice au talent confidentiel et tres alcoolique et son pere, un poete celebre bien que jamais publie... Mais comment survivre la-bas sans sa sur devouee, grande gueule, qui rendait tout ce chaos supportable pendant leur enfance, et qui est maintenant trop occupee ou trop fatiguee pour prendre soin delle ?Peut-etre quen repartant de zero, Martha pourra ecrire un meilleur denouement pour son histoire ratee ou decouvrir que cette histoire nest pas encore tout a fait terminee." Evidemment Martha est un livre brillant et extremement drole sur la depression. Ce texte ma happee comme jespere toujours etre happee par un roman. En le lisant, je faisais la liste de toutes les personnes a qui je voulais lenvoyer, jusqua ce que je comprenne que je voulais lenvoyer a toutes les personnes que je connais. " Ann Patchett" Un roman veritablement drole sur lamour et le desespoir de la depression. Cest une chose rare et belle quand un auteur parvient a vous briser le cur avec humour ; cest aussi la qualite que jadmire le plus chez un ecrivain. " Cynthia DAprix Sweeney, The New York Times" Un roman incroyablement drole, porte par une energie folle. Pourtant, il parvient toujours a etre sensible et sincere, et a offrir un portrait nuance de ce que cela signifie dessayer de samender et de changer, meme lorsque cela implique de repartir de zero. " The Guardian

EVENING STANDARDS BEST FICTION BOOKS TO LOOK FORWARD TO IN 2022What do you do, when you find the perfect family......and its not yours?Rare and delightful . . . A beautifully crafted novel about female relationships. I couldnt put this book downMarie ClaireThe only thing Abi ever wanted was a proper family. So when she falls pregnant by an Australian exchange student in London, she cannot pack up her old life in Croydon fast enough, to start all over in Sydney and make her own family.It is not until she arrives, with three-week-old Jude in tow, that Abi realises Stu is not quite ready to be a father after all. And he is the only person she knows in this hot, dazzling, confusing city, where the job of making friends is turning out to be harder than she thought.That is, until she meets Phyllida, her wealthy, charming, imperious older neighbour, and they become almost like mother and daughter.If only Abi had not told Phil that teeny tiny small lie, the very first day they met...

So smart, so funny, so moving. I absolutely loved it.Bonnie Garmus, New York Times bestselling author of Lessons in ChemistryThe brilliant (Ann Patchett) and much beloved author of the critically acclaimed Sorrow and Bliss returns with a tender and hilarious novel about heartbreak and the journey from isolation and loneliness towards love.Sophie Pattison loves books. And as well as a dream job at a local book festival, she has a husband she adores, a lifelong best friend, Emma, and a brother shes always been close to. Which makes you wonder why since Christmas Sophie has been living alone, estranged from Emma, avoiding her brother, and about to be fired.Now it feels like the only thing she has left is reading. When Sophie re-discovers an author she first read in her twenties, the words on the page reach her in a new waybecoming both solace and company. Devouring every one of her novels, Sophie begins to dream of meeting her, knowing she never will. But what if she did? What if, by then, the author feels like a friend? What if, for Sophie, it feels almost like love?In this much anticipated novel, Meg Mason captures the heartache and dark humor of our relationships in all their complexity, giving us a story about the power of connection and an ode to the inexplicable nature of the human heart.

Winner of the Book of the Year (Fiction) at the British Book Awards Shortlisted for the Womens Prize for Fiction"Brilliantly faceted and extremely funny. . . . 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 PatchettThe internationally bestselling, compulsively readable novela work of spiky, sharp, intriguingly dark comedy that combines the psychological insight of Sally Rooney with the sharp humor of Nina Stibbe and the emotional resonance of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine.Martha Friel just turned forty. She used to work at Vogue and was going to write a novel. Now, she creates internet content for no one. She used to live in Paris. Now, she lives in a gated community in Oxford that she hates and cant bear to leave. But she must now that her loving husband Patrick has just left.Because theres something wrong with Martha. There has been for a long time, an unnamed mental illness since a little bomb went off in her brain, at seventeen, leaving her changed in a way no doctor or drug could fix then and no one, even now, can explainwhy can say she is so often sad, cruel to everyone she loves, why she finds it harder to be alive than other people.With Patrick gone, the only place Martha has left to go is her childhood home, the heart of a chaotic family drama, to live with her chaotic parents, to survive without Ingrid, the sister who made their growing-up bearable, who said she would never give up on Martha, and who finally has.It feels like the end but maybe, by going back, Martha will get to start again. Maybe there is a different story to be written, if Martha can work out where to begin.

Todo el mundo dice que Martha Friel es inteligente y bella, una escritora brillante a la que siempre ha amado durante su vida adulta un hombre, Patrick, su marido. Un regalo que según su madre no todo el mundo tiene. ¿Entonces, por que todo esta roto? ¿Por que Martha, a punto de cumplir 40, no tiene amigos, salta de trabajo basura a trabajo basura y esta siempre triste? ¿Y por que Patrick se ha ido? A lo mejor es demasiado sensible, alguien que encuentra, mucho mas que la mayoria, que es muy dificil estar vivo. O, a lo mejor (lo que siempre ha creido ella), que algo no funciona dentro de ella. Algo que se rompio en su cabeza cuando tenia 17 y la cambio de tal manera que ningun medico, terapia o droga ha conseguido ni explicar ni solucionar. Obligada a vivir de nuevo con sus bohemios y disfuncionales padres en el hogar de su infancia en un pintoresco barrio londinense pero sin la inestimable y devota ayuda de su hermana Ingrid, Martha tiene una ultima oportunidad: o aceptar que su vida esta demasiado rota como para arreglarla o, a lo mejor, empezar de nuevo y escribir un mejor final para su vida.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMENS PRIZE FOR FICTIONCompletely brilliant. I think every girl and woman should read itGillian AndersonExactly the book to read right now, when you need a laugh, but want to cryObserverA raucously funny, beautifully written, emotion-bashing bookThe TimesEveryone 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. A gift, her mother once said, not everybody gets.So why is everything broken? Why is Martha - on the edge of forty - friendless, practically jobless and so often sad? And why did Patrick decide to leave?Maybe she is just too sensitive, someone who finds it harder to be alive than most people. Or maybe - as she has long believed - there is something wrong with her. Something that broke when a little bomb went off in her brain, at seventeen, and left her changed in a way that no doctor or therapist has ever been able to explain.Forced to return to her 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.THE PHENOMENAL SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERJust read it. Its unforgettableIndia Knight, Sunday TimesThe most wonderful, heartbreakingly gorgeous novel of the yearElizabeth DayIt is impossible to read this novel and not be moved. It is also impossible not to laugh out loudGuardianI was making a list of all the people I wanted to send it to, until I realised that I wanted to send it to everyone I knowAnn PatchettOne of those "read it in one sitting and tell all your friends" kind of booksEvening StandardA sharply observed, darkly hilarious and merciless portrait of a thoroughly messed-up familyClare ChambersCompulsively readable, Sorrow and Bliss is one of the funniest books Ive readi PaperFunny and as endearing as a good friendBarbara KingsolverFiercely intelligent and absolutely sublimeIrish Independent An instant Sunday Times bestseller and a book of the year for the Times and Sunday Times, Guardian, Observer, Independent, Mail on Sunday, Evening Standard, Spectator, Daily Express, Irish Times, Irish Examiner, Irish Daily Mail, Metro, Critic, Sydney Morning Herald, Los Angeles Times, Stylist, Red and Good Housekeeping