title: The Happy Couple by: Dolan, Naoise published: 2023-05-25 read: 2023-06 preview

This is a slightly alienating book about relations, about love, about life. It describes Celine and Luke. Celine is a concert pianist with considerable success, but not at the level of Martha Argerich. Luke, her to-be-husband: “Bridesmaid who hadn’t fucked Luke. That was how Phoebe remembered who Ró was. If that didn’t tell you everything you needed to know about Luke –”.

But Luke is not central to the story. Neither is Celine. They are, but they aren’t. It’s more about the people, characters, around them. “Although Madame Esmeralda hated other felines, she cherished her humans for their opposable thumbs. They were lousy gymnasts and alarmingly hairless, but they opened her chicken cans, and that was not nothing.”

The Guardian, which I cannot recommend enough for book reviews, writes: Dolan’s narratives are casually bisexual, cracking open marriage-plot narratives – less love triangle, more sex pentangle – with bed-hopping that’s neither transgressive nor redemptive but simply a fact of life. (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/may/15/the-happy-couple-by-naoise-dolan-review-less-love-triangle-more-sex-pentangle; this review is, of course, much better than mine; this is always true.)

I liked the book. But a week after finishing it I had to be reminded what it’s all about again. The title does not really stick, even when the couple is not happy at all. The fact that Celine is a concert pianist excited me, and I could pretend to relate to her absent-mindedness, her focussing on piano above anything else, even when the glove wearing is – I think – a bit ridiculous. I related less to Luke, and indeed could say there is some character development missing in the book. But then, to me, that made Luke a bystander of the story of his life.

In the end, everyone loses. And everyone wins. A ripple in the void.