#BookReview of #TheCouples by Lauren Mackenzie | @LuluMack57

‘Three couples, one night.
And the life that follows…‘

[ About The Couples ]

Eva looked out the attic window of their charming guest house and watched the sun rise. She thought she might be sick. Splayed on the lawn below was Frank, apparently out cold. Her husband snored in the bed behind her. She loved Shay, of course she did, but right now the only person she wanted to think about was Conor. She didn’t want to think about Bea or Lizzie or what Lizzie might have got up to with Shay.

Frank’s 48th birthday had given the three couples an excuse for a much needed night away from children, nagging bills and ailing parents. The drink flowed, life in Dublin with all its stress felt a long way away. When Frank proposed they swap partners, it felt deliciously, irresistibly reckless. One night. No obligations. No expectations. All the women had to do was text a man of their choice. 

The only rule? No falling in love.

It was a night that some of them couldn’t remember. And others couldn’t forget.

[ My Review ]

The Couples by Lauren Mackenzie was published July 6th with John Murray and is described by Donal Ryan as ‘a blockbuster in waiting’.

Three couples head off on a trip together to celebrate a 48th birthday. One night away without children, one night where they can let their hair down and relive their youth without guilt or regret. That was the plan, but what happened was an implosion of relationships and friendships, an unexpected shifting of the scales in this beautiful and evocative read.

‘The first time Eva saw Shay, it was at a rave on an eco-farm in Leitrim where he was working. He was twenty-two, she was a year older. With or without drugs, he bounced around like Tigger, smiling, always happy.’ Now married with twins, Ella and Katie, Eva is a school teacher and Shay is a landscaper. Like all couples they have financial constraints but they manage along, going through the motions of daily living, with routines and budgeting and managing to make ends meet. Since the financial crash, the media was full of depressing news and a night away, without children, with their best friends, was an unexpected and exciting prospect.

Bea and Conor seem to have it all. A glamorous couple with a lovely home they have one child, Fiach and Jaro, their Jack Russell. Their life runs like clockwork with Bea at the helm. Bea has always been organised which was part of the attraction when Conor met her six years previously. Their ‘home was a two-storey over-basement Georgian terrace on Grantham Street; the renovation cost nearly as much as the house and the repayments continued to be a strain every month. And now the house was only worth half what they’d spent on it.’

Lizzie and Frank – ‘they used to be the kind of couple that took risks, scoffed at rules, leaned into the dark. And now they were middle-aged, monogamous and mortgaged. the only thing they’d avoided was marriage but they were as good as, just fools for denying themselves the wedding party and the presents.’ They have four children between them. Georgia and Jimmy, nine and six, with Lizzie having a daughter, Maya, now fifteen, from a previous relationship and Frank a son, Jack, of a similar age. Frank is a frustrated film-maker with a career that never really took off. Now it’s his forty-eighth birthday and his friends are insisting on a party to mark the occasion. Frank is broke and despondent but he acquiesces to this night away as his friends offer it as a birthday present, a treat to mark the occasion. Once upon a time, Lizzie had been an actor with great potential, but her career stalled when her personal life got complicated.

On arriving at Hardwood House, an old country estate in Co. Laois, the three couples have dinner with the host and then set off to the local where things take a very unexpected turn. After a few drinks, inhibitions are loosened and Frank makes a suggestion that the six mix things up a little. He introduces a party game, with ‘no obligations or no expectations‘, one involving partners swapping. It is meant as a joke, a bit of fun but as the following morning rolls around, the reality of what may or may not have happened threatens to destroy the friendship. Are all parties guilty of crossing a line? Does what goes on tour stay on tour? Can the three couples rescue their relationships?

The Couples is a wonderful tapestry of interconnected lives and the implications for all when things get complicated. It’s a book described by the Irish Times as ‘Normal People for married people’ which really is a very apt description. Lauren Mackenzie’s observations on relationships, family and married life are all wonderfully depicted. There is humour mingling in close proximity with high drama. There is a sadness for times lost and a fear for what lies ahead. Life is complicated at the best of times but for Eva, Shane, Bea, Conor, Lizzie and Frank, they have all reached a threshold and are now confused, pained, angered and grieving for what was and what could have been. Beautifully rendered from the opening pages, The Couples is a wistful, smart and acutely-observed read, a novel that lingers long after the final pages are turned. It really would make an outstanding stage-play!

[ Bio ]

Lauren Mackenzie grew up in Sydney, Australia but now lives in Dublin with her family. After a long career as a screenwriter and editor in film and television, she returned to fiction in 2o17, completing an MA in Creative Writing in UCD. She was shortlisted for Cuirt New Writing Prize, Hennessy New Irish Writing, and Fish Short Story Prize. She has been published in The Stinging Fly, The Moth, Banshee, the Irish Times, and The Lonely Crowd among others. Recently she was awarded Literature Bursaries by the Arts Council of Ireland and in 2021, her novel, The Couples, was a joint winner of the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair 2021.

Twitter ~ @LuluMack57