Naoise Dolan is a queer and autistic Irish writer, with degrees from Trinity College and Oxford University. A Happy Couple is her second novel.
Celine and Luke, after dating for three years, are engaged to be married. During the engagement party, Luke goes missing, and Celine is left to deal with the questioning guests. Celine’s sister Phoebe and Luke’s friend and ex-boyfriend, Archie, follow Luke to a hotel where he’s having a drink with Celine’s ex-girlfriend Maria. When confronted by Celine, Luke lies, saying he was called to Dublin for work. Meanwhile, Phoebe and Luke, seeing that Celine wants to remain in denial, don’t reveal the truth. Luke and Archie meet up months later and have one last rendezvous, recollecting their relationship together a decade earlier. All the while, Celine is more interested in her piano career than confronting her fiancé about her suspicions. When the wedding day arrives, Luke gets serious wedding day jitters and confides in his old friend Vivian for answers. The wedding day involves drama for all the characters and provides them all with some much-needed life lessons.
The story is slow-moving and mostly dialogue-driven. All of the characters are flawed and unlikeable, as they treat each other poorly and often leave their conversations unfinished. The story is divided into six parts, with each part telling the story from a different character perspective, making the story more interesting. Unfortunately, the flow of the story is not always linear or easy to follow as there are several flashback scenes throughout, mostly serving to provide background on the characters’ relationships instead of moving the plot forward.
Narrator Ayoola Smart, who performs the majority of the narration, uses a wry, sarcastic tone throughout and keeps the characters evenly balanced. It would have been more effective to narrate with more drama and emotion to bring out the characters’ different personalities. This audiobook would also have benefited from the use of multiple narrators. Bert Seymour’s short performance of Luke is entertaining and convincing. In summary, the book offers a lot of interesting dialogue and literary references throughout, but the story is neither overly captivating nor plausible. To say something positive, this is a shorter listen with very short chapters, so giving this one a try, if the premise sounds intriguing, may still be worthwhile for some.
