A dazzling novel about modern love up against the confusing, sad aches of mental illness - with all its highs, lows, humour and misery.

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

'Both fantastically dark and almost unbearably funny... 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... Mason pulls off something extraordinary in this huge-hearted novel'
Clare Clark, Guardian

'Summer's must-read novel'
Stylist

'Utterly compelling and darkly funny: the book you have to read this summer'
Evening Standard

'A raucously funny, beautifully written, emotion-bashing book'
The Times

'I 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 know'
Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch House

'A masterclass on family, damage and the bonds of love'
Jessie Burton, author of The Confession

'Patrick Melrose meets Fleabag. Brilliant'
Clare Chambers, author of Small Pleasures

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? Why is Martha - on the edge of 40 - 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 17, 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.

Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason is a knockout. An unnamed mental health illness and a struggling marriage are both rendered by Mason with devastating honesty and laugh-out-loud wit.