Now Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2022 Mason explores a very painful and difficult topic: How do you determine whether a person's behavNow Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2022 Mason explores a very painful and difficult topic: How do you determine whether a person's behavior can be ascribed to their mental illness or whether it must be ascribed to them simply behaving badly, on their own agency? And she does pull that off in a narrative told from the perspective of the person suffering from an unspecified mental condition: Martha has known that something is wrong since she was a teenager, but it takes years until she is diagnosed correctly - but does that improve her health? And who is to blame for her two failed marriages, her illness or her personality? Not only do the people around her struggle to answer that question and thus to find a way to treat her right, she herself is unsure - and not to be able to trust your own mind is a terrifying thought.
We meet Martha after her second husband has left her shortly after her 40th birthday - and right from the start, she seems like a difficult, troubled, and sad person. Slowly, we get to learn about her backstory and her suffering, how she has wronged the people around her and how she has been wronged by them. Necessarily, Martha must remain an unreliable narrator, which is only one of the many reasons we as readers have a hard time judging. And for all those now longing to comment that judging a mentally ill person is not right: Please spare me, I happen to know how Martha's husband must have felt, and I know what it means for caretakers to be told that their feelings of sadness, anger and helplessness are not valid. In fact, they are very valid.
Martha's tone as a narrator is very sardonic, which underlines her (limited, but nonetheless existent) ability to self-reflect and her intelligence. The humor always has a melancholic undertone, but it also helps with the effective portrayal of supporting characters like Martha's sister Ingrid or her alcoholic mother. This cast would make a fun movie by Sofia Coppola.
A wonderful discovery - thanks, Women's Prize!...more
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