You Be Mother: The debut novel from the author of Sorrow and Bliss

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This novel is hilarious, heartfelt, touching, saddening and infuriating (this one is for the Brush).

Abi is a Social Work undergraduate, working part-time in Student Services to help out with the stretched family finances, when she falls pregnant to larger-than-life Australian architecture student Stu. They decide to make a go of it and Abi travels to Sydney with newborn Jude, where the small family is set up in Stu's parents' tiny investment property flat in Cremorne Point, next door to the Woolnough house. Meeting at the local swimming pool, recently widowed Phil (Phyllida) Woolnough is charmed by the lonely, jittery young British mum, and decides to take her under her capable wing. At first the need seems to come almost entirely from Abi's side - alone with her baby more than she should be, while Stu works at the local pub and continues his studies - but after a minor fall Phil comes to rely more and more on Abi for help and company. The relationship between the two women grows stronger and more equal, until a transgression threatens to destroy it.Abi, the main character, has had a tough upbringing. Enduring tragic loss in her childhood, and her mother’s spiral into a catatonic, depressive state, all Abi has ever wanted is a family. So when Abi meets Stu and falls in love, and a surprise pregnancy results in her moving to his native Australia, she dives headfirst. There, as a lonely young mother, she meets Phil, an older lady who has raised her own family but is mired in grief following the death of her husband. The two embark on an unlikely friendship that takes unexpected twists and turns. I loved You Be Mother and found it to be a delightful read that took me off to another world and made me look forward to the hours I could spend reading. Sometime laugh-out-loud funny, other times sad, this was a warm, insightful, bittersweet and very poignant book about families that I cannot recommend highly enough. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it! A truly comic novel about love and the despair of depression. It’s a rare and beautiful thing when an author can break your heart with humour; it’s also the quality I admire most in a writer.” THE NEW YORK TIMES It] belongs to a lineage of intelligent, witty and inventive novels that interrogate the problem of whether selfhood can survive motherhood, including Jenny Offill’s DEPT. OF SPECULATION and Sheila Heti’s MOTHERHOOD.This all sounds incredibly bleak, but Martha’s sharpness is acerbically funny and compellingly direct and worthy of the frequent comparisons to Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s FLEABAGand Ottessa Moshfegh’s works.” MELBOURNE WRITERS FESTIVAL

I was going to say, I’m excited for mason to write something that is not centred around motherhood, but actually this book is far more about friendship, the meaning of family, & filling the yawning gap your parents leave when you are a young adult (we love an inter-generational friendship). The beauty of Phil and Abi’s relationship felt so real, a mother figure without all the of expectation, past let downs, the intrusion of other family dynamics. Also covers loneliness and the liminal space between casual acquaintances and friends, imbued with longing, (which is so accurately portrayed, something I haven’t seen represented in text before - even though the same in romantic situations is the subject matter of every rom com ever). SORROW AND BLISS is a thing of beauty. Astute observations on marriage, motherhood, family, and mental illness are threaded through a story that is by turns devastating and restorative. Every sentence rings true. I will be telling everyone I love to read this book.” SARA COLLINS, author of THE CONFESSIONS OF FRANNIE LANGTONBut it is a bit of a strange novel. The events in the novel seemed completely unbelievable, especially when Abi returned to London. The story with Stu and his family really didn't add anything to the story; honestly, Stu's decision in the end was just completely out of the blue. Actually, that was the case with all the characters. Completely insufferable until the last few chapters and they all seemed to magically resolve all their issues to live a happy life. Mason's bleakly comic [US] debut examines with pitiless clarity the impact of the narrator's mental illness on her closest relationships…Mason brings the reader into a deep understanding of Martha's experience without either condescending to her or letting her off too easily. While we as readers have the luxury of finding her observations funnier than she does, we're not so far distanced from her that we can't appreciate both her strengths and her weaknesses. An astute depiction of life on the psychic edge.” KIRKUS Meg Mason has achieved something remarkable with her debut novel — Sorrow and Bliss is a raucously funny, beautifully written, emotion-bashing book about love, family and life’s curveballs that leaves you, satisfyingly, with what feels like wisdom forged in fire.” THE TIMES

Rarely have the excoriating effects of mental illness been articulated quite so beautifully – as heartbreaking as it’s funny.” RED MAGAZINE There was a lot I liked about this book (although it didn’t compare to her spectacular follow-up, Sorrow and Bliss, which is in a whole different league). At its core, this book transcends class by exposing the often-times lonely, under sung role of mothers. Mason’s book, is, all told, a love letter to motherhood in all its complexity. An impressive debut novel that finds the biggest drama in the smallest of actions. Whilst Stu finds it difficult to accept his fatherly responsibilities & quite frankly, acts like a total prat (easily aided by his doting mother, Elaine), Abi takes herself off to the local pool with her now born son, Jude. There she meets Phil, a widow whose adult children have all moved away. Together, they fill the holes in each other’s lives.The characters were so believable, I feel I may bump into the Woolnaugh’s in Mosman or Stu at a coffee shop in the Inner West struggling with a pram. Like Phoebe Waller-Bridge, to whose work this book will inevitably (but fairly) be compared, Meg Mason has an innate understanding of the comic power of sadness and how humour can be used to mask one’s reality….SORROW AND BLISS shines as a piece of fiction that makes explicit all the joys and afflictions of 21st-century life” BOOKTOPIA Abi has landed in Sydney with her three-week old son in tow and no idea what the future holds. Behind her in London is all that’s left of her family: her self-destructive mother and the depressing former council flat they shared. Her baby’s father, Stu – an Aussie architecture student who swept into her life during his few months as an exchange student – is woefully unprepared for fatherhood. His officious mother Elaine is terrifyingly judgemental. And although Stu’s father, Roger, is shaping up to be a quiet ally, it’s not until Abi meets the well-to-do, charming and high-handed Phyllida that things improve. As Phil and Abi grow closer, it seems like the older woman is the mother figure Abi longs for.

In Meg Mason’s almost eerily accomplished SORROW AND BLISS, the narrator Martha has suffered from mental illness since her teens. Yet, without ever playing down her pain, the result is often disconcertingly funny.” THE SPECTATOR The loneliness, isolation and grief throughout is heartbreaking but the moments of belonging and healing make up for this. The difference between those characters who have family vs those who desire family creates a real contrast which also tugs on the heart strings quite a bit. This is one of the best novels about marriage that I have read, and that is a large field…This is also one of the best novels about mental illness I have read…I am adding it to my list of the best novels of 2020, alongside Andrew O’Hagan’s MAYFLIES, Sofie Laguna’s INFINITE SPLENDOURS and Douglas Stuart’s SHUGGIE BAIN, which won the Booker Prize.” THE AUSTRALIAN I kept thinking that this book would make a fantastic movie! You Be Mother was hard to put down and I truly didn’t want it to end. An endearing and wonderful read. 💕This is the ultimate domestic drama. The storyline itself is somewhat anti-climatic but in the most amusing way (I truly mean this as a huge complement although it doesn’t sound one 😂). If you have read any of her other books you will hopefully understand what I mean by this. I guess what I am trying to say is that she takes something seemingly ordinary, and sprinkles her very own Meg Mason trademark glitter all over it so it shimmers and becomes brilliant.