Sorrow and bliss : a novel
(Playaway)

Title from container.

"Light."

"Harper Audio."

Previously released by Orion Publishing Group, ?2021.

Release date supplied by publisher.

Issued on Playaway, a dedicated audio media player.

One set of earphones and one AAA battery required for listening.

Read by Emilia Fox.

"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-?a-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 of man who cooks, throws her birthday parties, 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, and every kind of drug later, she still doesn't know what's wrong, why she spends days unable to get out of bed and alienates both strangers and her loved ones with casually cruel remarks. 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live with her mother, a minorly important sculptor (and major drinker), and her father, a famous poet (though unpublished). She must try to survive without the fiercely loving and foul-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 find out she's not quite finished after all."--,Provided by publisher.