At the heart of this smart debut novel by Lauren Mackenzie are a group of three middle-aged couples wondering where it all went wrong and what happened to the fun, carefree people they used to be.
The Couples begins the morning after a birthday party for Frank, a broke and feckless actor. The party takes place at a country house where Frank and his partner Lizzie, along with their couple friends Shay and Eva, and Conor and Bea, let loose from their responsibilities for one night. After too many drinks and substances are taken, a supposedly harmless party game suggestion – that the women choose which man they want to spend the night with – has lasting consequences for all three couples.
With this high-concept opening, this novel about middle-class middle-age begins. It’s a solid hook and by cycling through the perspectives of each of her six characters, Mackenzie gives us what feels like a fresh and stylish take on the midlife crisis. It takes a while for Mackenzie to differentiate her characters for the reader, which can be a little confusing to begin with, but once they establish themselves the story takes over.
Mackenzie, a native of Sydney, Australia, but living in Dublin with her family, has completed an MA in creative writing in University College Dublin and this novel was a joint winner of the Irish Writers’ Centre Novel Fair in 2021. She also previously worked as a screenwriter for Fair City and The Couples has been optioned for TV, which it would certainly adapt to well. The novel reminded me of a midlife take on the 1990s TV drama This Life, with its couples behaving badly and trying to resist becoming adults while clinging on to their departing freedom and youth.
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Mackenzie’s television background gives her an excellent understanding of propulsive narrative and she adds new elements of drama with generous regularity. Troubled, neglected children, #MeToo moments, affairs, job losses, money issues, children behaving badly, adults behaving badly, bust-ups and alcoholism all get thrown into the mix. At times this can feel a little perfunctory, like the story is serving the plot devices instead of the other way around, but the overall effect is a diverting, grown-up story about how the fear of regret and yearning for former selves can make people do rash things ... for which there are always consequences.
