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Fiction. Literature. Humor (Fiction.) HTML: Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction! "Brilliantly faceted and extremely funny. . . . While I was reading it, I was making a list of all the people I wanted to send it to, until I realized that I wanted to send it to everyone I know." �?? Ann Patchett The internationally bestselling sensation, a compulsively readable novel�??spiky, sharp, intriguingly dark, and tender�??that Emma Straub has named one of her favorite books of the year Martha Friel just turned forty. Once, she worked at Vogue and planned to write a novel. Now, she creates internet content. She used to live in a pied-à-terre in Paris. Now she lives in a gated community in Oxford, the only person she knows without a PhD, a baby or both, in a house she hates but cannot bear to leave. But she must leave, now that her husband Patrick�??the kind who cooks, throws her birthday parties, who loves her and has only ever wanted her to be happy�??has just moved out. Because 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. But countless doctors, endless therapy, every kind of drug later, she still doesn't know what's wrong, why she spends days unable to get out of bed or alienates both strangers and her loved ones with casually cruel remarks. And she has nowhere to go except her childhood home: a bohemian (dilapidated) townhouse in a romantic (rundown) part of London�??to live with her mother, a minorly important sculptor (and major drinker) and her father, a famous poet (though unpublished) and try to survive without the devoted, potty-mouthed sister who made all the chaos bearable back then, and is now too busy or too fed up to deal with her. But maybe, by starting over, Martha will get to write a better ending for herself�??and she'll find out that she's not quite f… (more)
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I particularly enjoyed Ingrid's sense of humour, and the character of Patrick.
What can be the point of that? And the disclaimer at the end: the symptoms "are not consistent with a genuine mental illness." So what is the point of making it all up?
One extra half star because at least it was fairly well-written
The story is told in first person by Martha so the reader must be prepared to be in the head of an unreliable and often unpleasant narrator. During the early part of her illness, she is misdiagnosed and treated with ineffective medications. The point seems to be how poorly mental illness is sometimes handled, and the damaging ramifications. Other themes are love, family, loneliness, and self-accountability.
I have mixed feelings about this book. It is compelling in that I ignored other books to focus on this one. I very much enjoyed the protagonist’s relationship with her sister and her sister’s large family. But I would not recommend it to anyone who prefers a likeable main character. I think the reader needs to be in a good place mentally before embarking on this one (e.g., not suffering from depression). I am uncomfortable with the way mental health and mental health professionals are portrayed. The author admits that she is unfamiliar with this field, and it shows.
This condition makes Martha trying for those who love her especially Patrick and her sister Ingrid. The novel does a good job of balancing the deleterious effects of mental illness but not excusing Martha for the horrible things she does. Nevertheless she remains a sympathetic narrator. I wasn't totally won over by this novel but did find it had some good parts about familial love and reconciliation.
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823.92 |