Books

Book review: Austen’s classic cleverly reimagined as a sort of gay Pride and Prejudice

The Happy Couple features a bisexual couple who decide to get married and is full of juicy insights into music, art, politics, class, relationships and the essence of Irishness

Naoise Dolan’s eagerly awaited second book pits the forces of gay pride against heteronormative prejudice

Pride and Prejudice has inspired more pastiches than any other novel. Literary and commercial authors, film and TV scriptwriters have all given it a go. Now Naoise Dolan’s eagerly awaited second book offers her own contemporary homage, ironically titled The Happy Couple.

“Homage” may seem reductive, but Dolan makes her idolatry explicit: “Jane Austen is possibly the most adored woman of all time.” The woman who wrote “novels that have elicited centuries of tears and ...