Five notable bittersweet novels

Meg Mason began her career at the Financial Times and The Times of London. Her work has since appeared in The Sunday Times, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sunday Telegraph. She has written humour for The New Yorker and Sunday STYLE, monthly columns for GQ and has been a regular contributor to Vogue, ELLE and marie claire, before becoming an author full time.

Her first book Say It Again in a Nice Voice, a memoir of early motherhood, was published in 2012. Her novel You Be Mother followed in 2017. Sorrow and Bliss is her third novel. She lives in Sydney, with her husband and two daughters.

[The Page 69 Test: Sorrow and Bliss]

At the Waterstones blog Mason tagged five favorite bittersweet novels, including:

Free Love by Tessa Hadley

The just-published Free Love is that rare kind of novel that feels completely new, like nothing you’ve read before, and like an old favourite at the same time, the sort of book you return to once a year. Set in 1960s suburban England, it follows the dissolution of a marriage between a conventional housewife and her even more conventional husband, after she falls in love with a deeply unsuitable, much younger man. The trick of it, it’s impossible to take sides and impossible not to care deeply about all three, and be moved by the wrenching conclusion.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue