An unnamed mental illness thwarts one woman’s stab at a happy marriage in a devastating and sharply funny love story
Martha is 40 and finally married to Patrick, a man who’s been secretly in love with her ever since teenagerhood. She now loves him back, but seems unable to be happy or even, on occasion, very nice to him. Ever since a “little bomb” exploded in her brain at the age of 17, she’s been on and off antidepressants, generally to little avail. Ultimately, when gentle, patient Patrick can take it no longer and walks out, Martha returns to her parents’ bohemian (AKA dysfunctional) family home in London’s Goldhawk Road and is forced to examine herself more closely. Is it simply, as she’s always felt, that she finds it “harder to be alive than most people”? Or is there some more devastating explanation – or diagnosis – which has been evading her all this time?
This is a novel about mental illness but, thanks to Mason’s astute, even inspired handling of the subject (of which more to follow) it succeeds in covering a great deal more ground besides. First, it’s a sharply entertaining – if not especially original – comedy of the maladjusted English middle class. Martha’s bittersweet relationship with her alternately protective and exasperated sister is fondly reminiscent of Fleabag. And there’s something recognisably, nostalgically old fashioned about this London of organic supermarkets, Belgravia Christmases, Southwark penthouses and privileged girls who work at small publishing houses specialising in “war histories written by the man who owned it” and are sent home at lunchtime because there isn’t enough to do.
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