Book review: Sophie, Standing There by Meg Mason (£20, Bloomsbury)

SOPHIE, STANDING THERE is a quiet triumph. I adored Meg Mason’s previous novel, SORROW & BLISS, and - dare I say - I think this novel is even better. It’s incredibly honest, funny, and emotionally raw, and Sophie, the protagonist, has remained in my thoughts a full week after finishing the read. This, in my view, is a sign of a beautifully drawn and fully inhabited character. The book has a simple premise: Sophie, 37, is struggling to come to terms with a failed marriage to Paul, she’s lost connection with her best friend, Emma, and is living in a rented flat (she spends a lot of time in the bath). She clips microphones onto The Talent at literary festivals and adores reading - refreshingly, she’s not attempting to be a writer - and is helpful and kind to everyone. Her few conversations are with her ultra supportive brother, Laurie, with whom she shares a complex past. Yet deep inside, she’s falling apart, and feels utterly invisible. Cue Sophie’s new, and burgeoning, obsession with the glamorous, articulate novelist, Lilac Dunne, whom Sophie is instrumental in getting invited to an upcoming literary festival. A devoted fan of all Lilac’s books, in her loneliness, Sophie sets up an ongoing, imaginary conversation with ‘the author’ and begins to feel she’s in love with her. What follows is a deep-dive into the nature of love, the power of personal transformation, and a resettling of memory and values in the aftermath of a difficult childhood. What I loved most about SOPHIE, STANDING THERE, is that, as readers, we are fully inside Sophie’s head, and we become party to her every obsessional thought. By turns this is a tender, excruciating, amusing, and yet also exhilarating experience, and it is this skill, in particular, that I think Meg Mason has particularly nailed in her fiction. Her books are easy to read, and yet they’re so deeply insightful about human emotion and human nature. It was no surprise to me to hear yesterday that SOPHIE, STANDING THERE has been selected as Book of the Month for Reese’s Book Club October ‘26 Pick, and this is the sort of novel I will be telling everyone about. A final shout-out to the wonderful cover design, by Amy Daoud, using a gloriously evocative image by the artist Kim Cogan, entitled ‘Testing the Waters’. As someone recently commented on my Instagram Story about this novel, ‘I’d buy it just for the cover alone!’ If you do buy it, you’ll get so much more than a gorgeous cover: Sophie Pattison will stay with you for a very long time.

SOPHIE, STANDING THERE, by Meg Mason (Bloomsbury, £20)