Sophie, Standing There by Meg Mason

Attendees of book festivals and author talks have no reason to ever think about people like Sophie Pattison, the heroine of Meg Mason’s lightly metaphysical, captivating new novel. A sound technician, she is the person who, among other work to make everything run without a hitch, stands in the wings with “the Talent” – luminaries such as George Saunders and Ann Patchett – and affixes their microphones in as inconspicuous a manner as possible. She is unprepossessing on first encounter – the novel’s title nods at her careful unobtrusiveness – and it is the reader’s delight to learn, in Mason’s skilled hands, just how extraordinary Sophie is.

As we meet Sophie, she is working freelance at a book festival, and the artistic director canvasses the staff for suggestions of authors who should be pursued for future events. Sophie mentions a writer who is “so famous, even real people had heard of her”, a former actress who now writes screamingly successful books that are all made into films.

The weeks go by and two things happen: Sophie withdraws from the world, not working, grieving her marriage, recently brought to a cruel end by her husband Paul, avoiding her best friend Emma, and FaceTiming constantly with her brother Laurie; and she plunges into an obsession with the famous author, rereading her books and voraciously consuming her online content.

It occurs to Sophie that she is in a parasocial relationship; that this woman feels like her great love. Then, as the author forms firmer edges in Sophie’s mind, the two start to converse – while it is clearly Sophie’s imagination at work, it is as though the line between reality and fantasy is thinning and the text itself becoming permeable.

It is easy to feel sympathy, even affection, for Sophie: she is far from a pathetic figure, but her life is achingly solitary, “quite bleak, and quite hard.” She is insecure, clever, introverted, longing for connection. When another character notes, much later in the story, that they have “never met someone who tried so hard to be happy by being kind”, it is woundingly accurate, like an arrow finding a fleshy target, and Sophie knows it.

This is a novel with gear shifts: while it’s intriguing and heartstring-tugging throughout, with the enveloping, can’t-look-away plotting and character development those familiar with Mason’s work will recognise, she steadily ups the stakes until the object of Sophie’s fascination is right in front of her and the story is fully electrifying, its destination unforeseeable.

Though there’s real sadness, it’s never maudlin or melodramatic, and in some ways it feels like a sister novel to Mason’s brilliant Sorrow and Bliss, particularly in the common thematic concerns about marriage and motherhood and unnamable loss. And in the end, though much of the book concerns another, more confident woman, who prompts Sophie to reckon with her whole life, it is Sophie who will leave her imprint on the mind of the reader, especially one who has ever been disappointed or heartbroken or somehow not met the social prescription for a woman’s life, whether in form or function.

Even if that doesn’t apply, Mason’s observational powers are so vast and acute that spending time with the people she has created feels like stepping through a portal into a different life, and that makes for a top-shelf contemporary novel.

Reviewer: Stephanie Jones

HarperCollins