Sorrow and bliss : a novel
(Book)

New Zealand author.

"Originally published in Australia in 2020 by Fourth Estate."--Title page verso.

Pushing away her devoted husband, a once-successful writer moves back into her bohemian childhood home, where she struggles to come to terms with the mental illness that has overshadowed her life.

There's something wrong with Martha, and has been for a long time. When she was seventeen a little bomb went off in her brain and she was never the same. At forty she spends days unable to get out of bed, and often alienates both strangers and her loved ones with casually cruel remarks. When her husband Patrick-- who has only ever wanted her to be happy-- moves out, she returns to her childhood home: a dilapidated townhouse in a rundown part of London, to live with her minorly important sculptor mother and her famous (but unpublished) father. Maybe, by starting over, Martha will find out that she's not quite finished after all. -- adapted from jacket.