You Be Mother: The debut novel from the author of Sorrow and Bliss

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Exploring the multifaceted hardships of mental illness and the frustrating inaccuracy of diagnoses, medications, and treatments, SORROW AND BLISS is darkly comic and deeply heartfelt. Much like the narrator of ELEANOR OLIPHANT IS COMPLETELY FINE Martha's voice is acerbic, witty, and raw. Fans of Marian Keyes should put this on their to-read lists.” BOOKLIST A truly comic novel about love and the despair of depression. It’s a rare and beautiful thing when an author can break your heart with humour; it’s also the quality I admire most in a writer.” THE NEW YORK TIMES I loved You Be Mother and found it to be a delightful read that took me off to another world and made me look forward to the hours I could spend reading. Sometime laugh-out-loud funny, other times sad, this was a warm, insightful, bittersweet and very poignant book about families that I cannot recommend highly enough. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it! All the stars for this affectionate study on mothers and their children (mostly daughters). Abi, of a troubled upbringing, falls pregnant to Stu, Aussie uni student, so they decide to make a go of it in Sydney. New to parenting (weren’t we all), Abi’s only experience is with her hoarder mother; until she meets Stu’s mum - the intimidating and disapproving Elaine ‘She emphasised the E, as though sadly accustomed to people making too short of that improtant first syllable. E-laine. She had a narrow frame, neat bosom, and a coarse, ferociously brushed plume of hair. Its short sides and rounded top put Abi in mind of a toilet brush.’

There must be so much collective struggle. Do you know what I mean? In all the paintings, and all the art that’s been created. I think it just made me feel better when I was looking at it, thinking, everybody who tries to make something is going to have an awful time of it, at some point.” I was just so depressed, and I didn’t know what to do next. Writing was all I’ve ever really wanted to do as a full-time thing, and then to discover that you can’t do it, that you’ve reached the end after not that long...” Mason says. Sharp yet humane, andjaw-droppingly funny, this isthe 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 masterclasson family,damage and the bonds of love:as soon as I finishedit, Istarted again.” JESSIE BURTON, author of THE MINIATURISTYou 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.” EVENING STANDARD Meg Mason writes about the slow bleed of life-long depression with candour, humour and stark precision. SORROW AND BLISS is about what happens when your illness pushes everyone away - leaving you with only the sorest parts of yourself for company. It will, as the title suggests, shatter your heart, before mending it with infinite love. I've never read anything like it and will be pressing it into the hands of every reader I know.” PANDORA SYKES It is, she says, a work of imagination; she has not experienced the same issues as Martha. But she is adamant that she wanted to explore the territory, arguing that the estimates of the proportion of people impacted by mental illness – she mentions one in four – seem “ridiculously” low: “When I look around my group of friends and my family, I can’t see a person who hasn’t been touched by it in some way.” Mason is brilliant on family, its eye-rolling absurdities and its deep hurts. Martha’s drunken, bohemian mother is a sculptor who ignores her husband and her two daughters; when the girls were young, she would throw parties where she could be extraordinary in front of extraordinary strangers, because it was “not enough to be extraordinary to the three of us”. Her kind, self-effacing father is a failed poet “whose desire to help me had always exceeded his ability”. Born in New Zealand, writer Meg Mason began her career at the Financial Times in London before switching to The Times to write on lifestyle, parenting and humour. After relocating to Sydney, she began writing for the Sydney Morning Herald, Russh, the British Medical Journal, Cosmopolitan and GQ. She now writes regular features and the popular ‘Mum vs. World’ column for Sunday magazine. She lives in Sydney with her husband and two daughters.

At its core, this book transcends class by exposing the often-times lonely, under sung role of mothers. Mason’s book, is, all told, a love letter to motherhood in all its complexity. An impressive debut novel that finds the biggest drama in the smallest of actions. Befriended by newly widowed next door neighbour Phyllida (or Phil, as she likes to be called), her days have some meaning. Especially when Stu has trouble coming to terms with being a responsible adult and a father. This story line is interspersed with Phil’s own children and their troubles. It] belongs to a lineage of intelligent, witty and inventive novels that interrogate the problem of whether selfhood can survive motherhood, including Jenny Offill’s DEPT. OF SPECULATION and Sheila Heti’s MOTHERHOOD.This all sounds incredibly bleak, but Martha’s sharpness is acerbically funny and compellingly direct and worthy of the frequent comparisons to Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s FLEABAGand Ottessa Moshfegh’s works.” MELBOURNE WRITERS FESTIVAL SORROW AND BLISS is a modern love story that’s funny and dark, sharp and tender, hopeful and hard to put down. It has a brooding Sally Rooney vibe (but explores a slightly older and more mature slice of life) with exceptional inner monologue and palpable chemistry among the characters.” GOOPSORROW 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 true. I will be telling everyone I love to read this book.” SARA COLLINS, author of THE CONFESSIONS OF FRANNIE LANGTON