![]() ![]() Brought into the heart of this family, he meets Martha, admiring her from afar and falling in love with her. ![]() ![]() Patrick’s father lives in Singapore and he has been left at boarding school to fend for himself. It is at one of these Christmases when Martha’s cousin brings a friend home with him for Christmas. ![]() An affluent couple with three children, they host Christmas every year and ensure there is a big family meal and gifts, even whilst Martha’s mother shoots barbed comments at Winsome, her sister, and drinks herself into oblivion amongst the discarded wrapping paper. Their only form stability comes from both their relationship, which is tight-knit and almost impenetrable, and their aunt and uncle, Winsome and Rowland. Martha and her sister, Ingrid were often left to their own devices, especially when their parents went through one of their regular separations and their father, the one who ensured they were clothed and fed, left the family home. She is from a bohemian family an artist mother whose sculptures made from reclaimed items absorb all of her time and a poet father who had a successful book many years earlier and has been trying, and failing to write a follow up ever since. At the heart of the novel is Martha, a 40 year old woman who has suffered with mental illness since “a bomb went off” in her brain at aged 17. Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason is a gorgeous novel about family, love and mental illness. ![]()
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