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- to live with her mother, a minorly important sculptor (and major drinker) and her father, a famous poet (though unpublished) and try to survive without the devoted, potty-mouthed sister who made all the chaos bearable back then, and is now too busy or too fed up to deal with her.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 finished after all.
Comment: I saw this book at the library and the blurb caught my attention by the reference to Gail Honeyman's book, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, which I've read in 2019 and liked. Although this book had its slight interesting details, the reading experience was not as engrossing as when I've read Honeyman's.
Martha Friel is now forty and her life has never felt as if it was something she could control. She went and goes through the motions and she has family members to help her, but there is something she feels isn't right with her. Her marriage is ending, since her devoted husband can't seem to have the patience to take of her anymore. What can Martha do, if her issue is the lack of a label to her mental illness, is that the solution for her problems?
The author writes or wrote for magazines and I don't know if that was part of the reason why this book feels as if it's shared by small parcels, but I got that feeling. I suppose it was intentional and not having read anything else by her before, I can't say, but the narrative style of sharing moments, or describing only situations with short paragraphs wasn't very conductive to make me eager to feel I was getting to know the characters properly.
Apparently, Martha is kind of sharing her thoughts as if in a diary which might explain the tactic used. However, the graphic text isn't obviously diary entries, sometimes we have full narrative text so the effect wasn't a linear one to me. Besides, the longer I read, the less I liked being in Martha's head. Again, I bet this was intentional, so the reader could sympathize with the struggle of someone with a mental illness (never named/labeled) and how sometimes it tires people, both the sufferer and those around them.
But my experience reading about the heroine in Gail Honeyman's book was way better in that regard - and I compare because the blurb does the same - and I could sympathize with the heroine's life and choices and commiserate even when she made some mistake. In here, Martha might have been entitled all the reason in the world to not be understood, as often patients with a mental illness aren't, but as a reading exercise, to me this wasn't a very good one, Martha didn't seem to engage in the kind of behavior I'd expect and I can rationally accept she might not be at fault, as any real person couldn't, but reading about such a fictional character and not really liking her, feels both wrong and unavoidable, I feel bad I'm not understanding but how could I be if she isn't likable?
Martha apparently wanted to be a mother. She was told many times she shouldn't, mostly by doctors, and she accepted that, but then most of her behavior was somehow related to this "impossibility" and while I can't say how realistic or not it would be, her way of processing things made her a little annoying and aloof and I struggled to see the side of her which would make me understand her fears and doubts. Her personality and way of living just didn't captivate me - how vague her life was, how aimless, how suddenly she would live here or there, do this or that, as if it wouldn't be a difficulty for most people... I know this was certainly intentional, but it didn't make for a fun read for me.
Obviously, her illness affects her life and the life of those around her. We get to see how her family copes and especially her sister was quite a support system, but the way this was written didn't make me feel emotional connections with these characters, not even the husband who, for all purposes, helped Martha even when they were just friends. I've finished the novel not really sentimentally moved by what happened, nor how Martha found a doctor who gave her hope, and helped her put a name to her issues, as if this would give her a starting point to fix her own thoughts and life a organized life.
At the end, the author says the illness depicted was made up and she invented the symptoms and all that. I can see her idea, as if saying anyone would be influenced to act/react just because of a label, and how unfair that could be to the patient. However, to me, this just made me feel disappointed, because I wanted something more solid, more specific to understand Martha and how her progress and well being could truly happen after having something certain - as stated by her decision to live her life with the notion she can now put a name to her illness.
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