The Happy Couple

Description

Meet the happy couple. Luke and Celine, are in mutual unrequited love with each other, set to marry in a year's time. The best man, Archie, is meant to want to move up the corporate ladder and on from his love for Luke; yet he stands where he is, admiring the view. The bridesmaid, Phoebe, Celine's sister, has no long-term aspirations beyond smoking her millionth cigarette and getting to the bottom of Luke's frequent unexplained disappearances. Then there's the guest, Vivian, who with the benefit of some emotional distance, methodically observes her friends like ants. As the wedding approaches and these five lives intersect, each character will find themselves looking for a path to their happily ever after - but does it lie at the end of an aisle? Naoise Dolan, author of Exciting Times, makes the Marriage Plot entirely her own in a sparkling ensemble novel that is both ferociously clever and supremely enjoyable.

Naoise Dolan is an Irish writer born in Dublin. She studied at Trinity College, followed by a master's in Victorian literature at Oxford. She writes fiction, essays, criticism and features for publications including The London Review of Books, The Guardian and Vogue. Naoise's debut novel EXCITING TIMES was published by W&N in the UK and by Ecco in the US in 2020, and became a Sunday Times bestseller, widely translated and optioned for TV. She has been shortlisted and longlisted for several prizes, including The Women's Prize for Fiction, the Dylan Thomas Prize and The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award.

Sassy and smart and wickedly funny, Dolan's voice is uniquely her own. I inhaled every irreverent page -- Ruth Gilligan, author of The Butchers I just finished The Happy Couple and I loved it - an extremely funny examination of modern love, with depth, bite and poignancy. It will stay with me for long after I turned the final page -- Daisy Buchanan, author of INSATIABLE Dolan, whose debut novel Exciting Times was a storming success, is sure to bring her sparkling wit and insightful understanding of human relationships to this second outing * Irish Independent * I pure LOVED The Happy Couple. So witty, observant, wise and funny. Nihilistic about heteronormative relationships but so charmingly done I barely noticed. I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed it -- Marian Keyes A cracking ensemble, The Happy Couple is a beautiful sonata about our relationships and a sad fugue for fear and loneliness. The book is a tough, all-engrossing love-test. Dolan's acerbic humour is unapologetically analytical. She breaks the rule of intimacy with wit and panache that are second to none. I was kept on tenterhooks till the last few pages and my heart wouldn't stop pounding afterwards. I don't want to say goodbye to Luke and Celine. -- Kit Fan, author of DIAMOND HILL