Or maybe – as she has long believed – there is something wrong with her. Maybe she is just too sensitive, someone who finds it harder to be alive than most people. 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? A gift, her mother once said, not everybody gets. Brilliant’Ĭlare Chambers, author of Small PleasuresĮveryone 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. ‘One of those “read it in one sitting and tell all your friends” kind of books ‘ ‘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’ ‘A raucously funny, beautifully written, emotion-bashing book’ ‘The most wonderful, heartbreakingly gorgeous novel of the year’ ‘Exactly the book to read right now, when you need a laugh, but want to cry’ I think every girl and woman should read it’

‘Probably the best book you’ll read this year’ ‘Full of snappy one-liners but, at the same time, remarkably poignant’ It is also impossible not to laugh out loud… Extraordinary’ ‘It is impossible to read this novel and not be moved. 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.įorced 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.SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 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.

The sorrow and the bliss