This is basically how I write. Even if I plan something in my head, the words that come to me in the moment might not match how I imagined it. I rely on cadence when I write. When the words manifest, they must agree with each other rhythmically, metrically, syllabically. There must be leitmotifs. There must be a traceable rhythmic journey of each paragraph in whatever I write. When I read over what I have written, I mentally taste each word and tap my foot. If the pattern makes sense I keep it. If not, I discard.

- The Happy Couple, Naoise Dolan

“Loneliness wasn’t having no one. Loneliness was the gap between what you hoped for and what you got.”

Read in 2023:

You keep describing yourself as this uniquely damaged person, when a lot of it is completely normal. I think you want to feel special — which is fair, who doesn’t — but you won’t allow yourself to feel special in a good way, so you tell yourself you’re especially bad

Remember the quarter-life crisis? Its prominence in the discourse harks back to a more innocent era, when stories about young urbanites couldn’t be faulted for omitting floods or wildfire smoke and when no U.S. presidential candidate actively fighting multiple felony charges had ever led polls in key battleground states.

Although Naoise Dolan’s The Happy Couple takes place in the present-day British Isles and its characters are generally aware of the dire state of the world, its characters are principally focused on understanding their own loves and libidos. The novel brings a more authentic perspective on sexuality than readers might have found a decade or two ago — both members of the eponymous couple are bisexual — but its core concerns are timeless.

That gives the book a certain universal appeal, but also presents a challenge: this is not the first will-they-or-won’t-they wedding story ever told. The author takes a kaleidoscopic approach to storytelling, rotating among the perspectives of friends and family members surrounding the eponymous pair of betrothed.

Each character intrigues, but in a relatively short novel — the audiobook runs five and a half hours — it’s hard not to feel cheated of deeper dives into the characters whose eternal happiness is most immediately in question.