Beautiful, funny and sad - loved it.

This book is so bloody funny. Loved the family roles and relationships. Cried, laughed out loud and couldn’t put it down.
Beautiful descriptions of ordinary everyday things add to the story and the plot is quite unexpected.
Highly recommend but have a tissue at the ready :-)

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5 people found this helpful

"I know what she was meant to be"

How can you describe this brilliant first novel from Meg Mason? To say it’s about mental illness misrepresents it, even though 40 year old Martha narrates how she has struggled with how she has felt and behaved since an unexplained ‘bomb’ went off in her head when she was 17 . She was unable to write a word in her A level French exam and took to spending most of her time under the table in her bedroom feeling like an animal ‘which knows instinctively that it is dying’. Her particular illness, constantly misdiagnosed and mis-medicated is named only as X which ensures, rightly, that its identity is not the focus of the novel. Throughout there is terrible sadness, pain and tragedy, but also (which seems impossible but isn’t) tremendous wit and laugh aloud funniness: a great achievement.

Martha and Ingrid are very close sisters growing up in a stressful dysfunctional family where Martha’s beloved failed-poet father is packed off to a hotel at intervals by her loathed, neglectful, heavy drinking, on-the-edge-of-greatness sculptor mother. If you think your family Christmases fall short, experience Martha’s with her mother’s sister, thwarted aunt Winsome, who manages to be well-meaning, faithful and awful at the same time, and her dreadful wealthy husband. Attached by chance to this family is young, gentle, motherless Patrick whose father has abandoned him to re-marry in Singapore. We know from the start, because Martha tells us ,that she will marry Patrick and that Patrick will leave her.


The characters are intensely real – Ingrid with her ever increasing family harassed beyond endurance by the drudgery of it all, serving her ‘famous pasta with nothing on it’ for supper and delivering crushing opinions and crashing faux pas. Poignant details say so much -Patrick as a boy and a man twisting the cuffs of his jumper when feeling awkward or defeated. What makes this very full novel so absorbing and moving is the exploration of people who behave so disastrously, ruining one another’s lives and causing so much distress to those who love them despite all. There is infinite kindness, poignancy, empathy, understanding of human suffering. When Martha later asks Winsome (herself a could-have-been pianist) how she can possibly bear her sister’s vile behaviour, she replies simply that she loves her ‘because I know what she was meant to be’.

Anyone who experiences mental disorder in themselves or in those whom they love, anyone who has struggled to understand themselves or others, anyone who has been driven beyond endurance by the behaviour of one whom they love or have loved, or anyone who has longed for a child themselves or is close to someone who has longed for one will recognise so much in this novel. Fresh insights will be revealed: amongst the upbeat funniness are powerful messages.


The narration by Emilia Fox is perfect in every way.

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Excellent

This book was dark at times but also funny (especially Ingrid the sister) and was thought provoking. Narration was excellent. I recommend to readers who are not looking for action & adventure or complicated plots but if you like family relationships and imperfections you will enjoy this book.

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Please listen to this book

Strangely I wasn’t gripped by this book at first. Then as the story unfurled I got a little obsessed and ended up listening to it 4 times back to back - there’s so so much to it - it’s too much for just one time.

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Fantastic book

Funny and poignant, i absolutely loved it.
The story was wonderful.
Beautifully read by Emilia Fox.

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Felt really involved with the protagonist

Really enjoyed exploring the inner workings of a troubled mind and journeying with the protagonist as she grapples with who she is.
Beautifully read too.

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Moving and thoughtful

I loved this book and I found it a very emotional read and didn’t want to put it down to get to the end of the book. Beautifully written and I loved all the characters. Emilia Fox reads it beautifully and I felt totally encompassed the characters.

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Narrated to perfection

The tiny details that cast a light onto ordinary lives and how I know I have thought about the world are incredible. Meg Mason has created characters that i cared for so deeply, that I understood yet felt the pain in lack of understanding. I don’t have the words to explain how wonderful this book was except that it will be one I listen to again.

Emilia Fox was incredible. And not just because she didn’t put on accents and falseness to for male characters etc. Just perfect.

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Superb

Really loved this book. Narrated perfectly, with fabulous descriptions delivered in just the right tone.

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loved reading the book

loved listening to emilia fox reading it more. what a performance! and full of compassion, too. very glad i got both versions.

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