Tuesday, September 13, 2022

Read With Us: Sorrow and Bliss Discussion

Hello and welcome to our Read With Us discussion of Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason. I'm anxious to discuss most of the books we've chosen, but I've been especially looking forward to this one. I first read the book back in April of this year and wished I had someone to discuss it with then. I don't know of a better bunch of people for a book discussion than all of you, so my wish is finally coming true. 


CaroleKym, and I have each posted a question or two on our blogs today, and we will have an in-person Zoom discussion at 7:00 pm Eastern this evening. You can send me an email (the email address is in the upper right) to RSVP and I will make sure you get an invitation with the Zoom link if you haven't already.

Please feel free to answer the questions and add your opinions in the comments, no matter whether you have read the book or not (or even if you tried and didn't finish). I'll be replying to your posts within the comment section for this discussion - and you can comment on other people's comments as well. If you are unable to attend the Zoom discussion tonight, we'd love to hear your thoughts, but you needn't feel obligated to comment here if you'll be attending the Zoom discussion. Your thoughts, comments, and opinions are valuable and we'd like to hear them here or in person tonight. I just don't want you to feel like you need to discuss the book twice (unless you want to)!

So the question that I have most wondered about and wanted to discuss is this: What did you think of the use of the — in Sorrow and Bliss? Did not naming Martha's mental illness push you to think about the use of labels regarding mental illness? Although Martha finally does receive a diagnosis, the name of her condition isn’t revealed in the text. Why do you think the author chose to present it with a dash (or X if you listened to the audiobook)? How did it impact your experience as a reader? If we have an identified illness does that excuse our behavior? Can we simply decide to change?

Martha herself says: “The thing about labels is they’re very useful when they’re right …because then you don’t give yourself wrong ones, like insane, or psychotic, or bad wife.”

Mason said that she began writing Sorrow and Bliss with a condition in mind, but quickly ditched it because she didn’t want to “…badly describe someone’s experience, or diminish it.” She went on to say how that decision linked to the fact that Martha seeks a diagnosis for many, many years and in the interim, her relationships are impacted by her mental health. “The reason I redacted it was that it didn’t matter. Plus, I wanted the reader to experience some of Martha’s frustration – it’s right there, but just out of grasp” Mason went on to say that by not naming the condition, more readers might identify with parts of Martha’s experience. I think Mason achieves this – a label leads you down a path of assumptions and generalizations. Instead, the reader shares Martha’s uncertainty.

I'll admit that immediately after I finished the book, I wondered what Martha's diagnosis was. Various reviewers and critics have postulated that it could have been bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, or even schizophrenia. I think that really, what Martha ‘has’ is beside the point – what is important is how she lives, and how she relates to others. 

What do you think?

13 comments:

  1. Looking forward to the discussion and I'll see you tonight!

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  2. X absolutely was off putting to me but I did not consider that this was a way to make me think about the labels we give mental illness. Hmmm... more food for thought and this makes me more excited to talk about this book tonight! Likewise, I agree... it was not important for me to "identify the disease" but rather I found myself vested in the characters and how they interacted with each other.

    I think that Mason did an incredible job of bringing the reader into the lives of Martha as well as all of those around her... At times I was frustrated with Martha and other times I wished those around her used their knowledge in a more active way (Patrick, I am looking at you here!)

    Overall, I think this book was engaging and informing!

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    1. When I was googling "what Martha has" I came upon a comment where someone said she obviously had bipolar disorder because the shape and color of her pills were the same as lithium. This struck me as taking things a bit too far, and that's when I started to think that maybe the label wasn't important, it was more about how Martha acted and treated people around her. I'm really looking forward to hearing more of your thoughts tonight, Kat!

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  3. I really appreciated Meg Mason’s refreshing take on not “labeling” Martha’s particular mental illness. Without a label, we readers could remain open to what was actually happening to Martha, rather than filling in the blanks from our own experience or assumptions. I'm sure it drove many people to distraction, but I enjoyed the book more . . . knowing I didn't need to worry about WHAT mental illness she suffered with, just THAT she was suffering.

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    1. I agree; as soon as Martha is labeled with a diagnosis, I know I would have made assumptions about her behaviors and probably absolved her of some of her responsibilities regarding how she treated others. She was suffering and so were others around her and that is more important than labeling X.

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  4. I had a very similar reaction the first time I read it (and I immediately thought BPD). But I think that was pretty much the point and why she decided to not name a specific illness -- we are always so quick to put labels on things, but a label doesn't really tell you about one person's experience. Likewise, while a diagnosis of a specific illness or condition might explain some of Martha's behavior, it's not an excuse for it, and she still carries a lot of the responsibility.

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    1. Excuses and responsibility are some of the things I hope to hear about tonight. I don't think X is an excuse for Martha, but we don't blame people for having a broken leg or not being mobile because they are in a cast, so I'm not sure we should blame Martha because her brain biochemistry might be out of whack. I'm not a mental health professional and would really like to hear from others about excuses and responsibility!

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  5. I thought the book was an interesting approach to addressing the interpersonal and social aspects of mental illness. It didn't bother me that the dx was unnamed. I did spend a lot of time thinking about Martha's behavior. How much of her behavior was the result of how she was treated by others and how much of it was her biology.....sort of a nature/nurture question. The mother's behavior was certainly suspect, especially in dismissing and denying when the correct diagnosis was originally put forth 15 years earlier.
    I really appreciated the comic relief provided by Ingrid's character.
    It's interesting that no one has yet mentioned the issue of having children. How seriously Martha took the admonition about an unplanned pregnancy from when she was a teen vs Ingrid's fecundity...and the impact all that has on a woman's life.
    I wouldn't say the ending is happy. I would characterize it as hopeful, which is probably the realistic alternative.

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    1. I wished I could be more like the Ingrid character for my sister! I did get stuck on the same questions about Martha's behavior - what was her "fault", how much of it was how she was treated by others, and what was due to brain chemistry gone awry.

      I think you're right, having children (or not) is a big deal, in real life and certainly for Martha. I looked at Meg Mason's first two books and they seemed to be mainly about motherhood, but I haven't read them yet

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  6. Diagnosing mental illness is not as straight forward as diagnosing a physical illness, and although professionals will make every effort to be objective when using the DSM-5 to match symptoms to a diagnosis, it is still somewhat of a crap shoot. It's easy to treat someone according to their label, especially when that label is a mental health diagnosis, and that can get in the way of healing. So, I found it that by not giving the diagnosis, the reader could focus on the effects of Martha's illness on Martha and on her family members. In other words, instead of getting hung up on specific symptoms, the focus is on how those symptoms affect Martha's quality of life and her family dynamics. As far as egregious behavior goes, in most cases, the mental illness doesn't excuse it, unless the person is severely psychotic and detached from reality.
    I look forward to our discussion tonight!

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    1. Thank you, Debbie! I'm really glad to read your thoughts and was glad you could join us tonight. I value your input as a mental health professional and feel like I have a better understanding of the responsibilities that Martha bore for her behavior and how she treated people. The diagnosis of mental illness does seem fraught with difficulty; you can't just point to an x-ray or cat scan and say "there's the problem." Many diagnoses seem to be ones of a preponderance of symptoms, for example, does a person exhibit more symptoms of anxiety, depression, or possibly both? I feel like I learned a lot from this book and our discussion!

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  7. At first it bothered me that they didn't put a name on her diagnosis as it just hung out there for me that it wasn't named. I think the author didn't name it because without a name you could just follow the story without the diagnosis knowing it was there and over the book, it ended up not really botherin me.

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    1. I agree, the story was a much better one without Meg Mason giving Martha a specific named diagnosis. I would have made assumptions about Martha and whatever mental illness she had been diagnosed with, but instead, I was better able to understand how Martha's behavior affected herself and all of those people that loved her.

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