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The Couples
The Couples, by Nicole Callihan, finds a woman at a crossroads in her marriage and her family life, remembering and reexperiencing her first relationship and all the damage her youth imparted upon her.
- GenresFiction
Paperback
Published July 16, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 18, 2019
THE COUPLES does a deep dive on the power of secrets and how one never quite finishes "coming of age." With snappy dialogue and a pressure-cooker setting of a weekend home in Connecticut, this novella is at times fun, funny, and still incredibly heart-wrenching. In under 100 pages, Nicole Callihan created a rich group of friends and so much depth.
June 19, 2019
Well, I published this book via Mason Jar Press, so I obviously love it.
July 13, 2019
In this stunning novella, Callihan weaves together two suspense-filled stories that weave together to a climatic ending. One feels the haunting of a past, the press of an Oklahoma sky that the protagonist can't let go, as a group of couples and their children gather for a weekend birthday party. What ensues will keep you on the edge of your seat. A middle-aged drama charged with sexual tension and the lightning crack of desire. I highly recommend reading this book!
December 30, 2019
I picked this book up and down 3 times and I’m glad I gave it the time it deserves.
The intimacy of a home also is very foreign. Long-time friends, all adults and some with children, harbor even the darkest of secrets. Performative actions are cast aside as the raw humans are unleashed through revelry, relaxation, and regret. A spectacular novella.
The intimacy of a home also is very foreign. Long-time friends, all adults and some with children, harbor even the darkest of secrets. Performative actions are cast aside as the raw humans are unleashed through revelry, relaxation, and regret. A spectacular novella.
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April 14, 2020A gorgeous story—brief and to the heart—about how we never quite escape our pasts, even when the present is beautiful. The past always remains.
November 14, 2019
This reminds me of Steve Donoghue’s joke about literary fiction—in that it encompasses upper middle class divorce in Connecticut. :P
Well, maybe not quite so much divorce here as much as midlife crisis. As it’s a novella, Callihan focuses pretty tightly on a specific event—the 42nd birthday of our protagonist, Julia. Of course flashbacks are included as well.
I’m reading through the Mason Jar Press novella series right now, and aspects of Julia’s life certainly remind me of the narrator of MANHUNT by Jaime Fountaine. They both don’t know their fathers, and have mothers engaged in sexually licentious lifestyles. Julia had been sexually assaulted as a preteen and engaged in an active sex life ever since, which seems a step up from the unnamed narrator’s summer of foreplay. Callihan is able to introduce this backstory to the narrative when, in the present, she and her girlfriends divulge information about the losses of their virginity.
Perhaps it’s a little bit of a setup, but this group of friends does have a flair for the naughtier side of life. They are “the couples,” husbands and wives that met around 8 years ago at a pregnancy class when preparing for their first children. It’s almost an ironic happenstance, because like a lot of stories about adults, the children are barely present here. All of the families, plus kids, are gathered at Julia’s Connecticut home for her party, but the kids only pop in and out a few times. I guess I find this odd—and I’m single, so my experience is all secondary—because a lot of real parents I know incorporate their kids more readily into their lives. Some of the characters in this story may be deemed as “unlikeable” by the group of readers who look out for such things, because said characters are pretty self-absorbed.
Most of them are also sleeping with each other, joking about sleeping with each other, or making better emotional couples across marital lines. It’s a fair amount of character establishment for such a small volume. One or two of “the couples” people are one dimensional, but I think that Christopher, Isla, Diane, Frank, Jenny, Drew and of course Julia can be seen as unique.
The external plot follows a hail storm that effectively cancels Julia’s party and strands the couples and children together—also including a lifeguard who, by way of the “Chekhov’s gun” literary conceit, is obviously there so that something bad can happen at the pool. Turns out the child/pool incident isn’t too bad, and I wonder if Callihan leaned a little into the drama there. But she wants us to focus on the lifeguard’s absence from the scene because she’s somewhere else with more thematic importance.
While I’m on the subject of picking on writing conceits, I’m not sure what I think about the occasional lapses into second person. Usually this is when Julia is the most inside her own head, and is trying to piece together a sense of purpose for herself through all these threads of past and present experiences. There’s another digression where she defines the word “storm,” after the characters realize one is set to strike in their area, where it starts with the literal translation and then moves into the emotional, given the events of the story. As a navel gazer myself, I thought they could be well written and thought provoking, if a little bit indulgent.
One area where I think Callihan shone in the narrative is through physical description of geography. Julia’s childhood and teenage years took place in rural Oklahoma, whereas she’s living a significant portion of her adult life in moneyed Connecticut. Both places feel so alive and vivid in the story, almost like they are characters unto themselves.
And just in case it’s not too on the nose here, there’s an in-narrative reference to Updike. :P But hey, when was family/personal drama NOT in style? Julia’s backstory, and perhaps even her desires, when it gets more specific than her fear of growing old and inconsequential, are different from my own. But this existential self-absorption, and the relationships to those in our closest orbit, are what make up the meat of most of our lives. I enjoyed dipping into this little slice.
Well, maybe not quite so much divorce here as much as midlife crisis. As it’s a novella, Callihan focuses pretty tightly on a specific event—the 42nd birthday of our protagonist, Julia. Of course flashbacks are included as well.
I’m reading through the Mason Jar Press novella series right now, and aspects of Julia’s life certainly remind me of the narrator of MANHUNT by Jaime Fountaine. They both don’t know their fathers, and have mothers engaged in sexually licentious lifestyles. Julia had been sexually assaulted as a preteen and engaged in an active sex life ever since, which seems a step up from the unnamed narrator’s summer of foreplay. Callihan is able to introduce this backstory to the narrative when, in the present, she and her girlfriends divulge information about the losses of their virginity.
Perhaps it’s a little bit of a setup, but this group of friends does have a flair for the naughtier side of life. They are “the couples,” husbands and wives that met around 8 years ago at a pregnancy class when preparing for their first children. It’s almost an ironic happenstance, because like a lot of stories about adults, the children are barely present here. All of the families, plus kids, are gathered at Julia’s Connecticut home for her party, but the kids only pop in and out a few times. I guess I find this odd—and I’m single, so my experience is all secondary—because a lot of real parents I know incorporate their kids more readily into their lives. Some of the characters in this story may be deemed as “unlikeable” by the group of readers who look out for such things, because said characters are pretty self-absorbed.
Most of them are also sleeping with each other, joking about sleeping with each other, or making better emotional couples across marital lines. It’s a fair amount of character establishment for such a small volume. One or two of “the couples” people are one dimensional, but I think that Christopher, Isla, Diane, Frank, Jenny, Drew and of course Julia can be seen as unique.
The external plot follows a hail storm that effectively cancels Julia’s party and strands the couples and children together—also including a lifeguard who, by way of the “Chekhov’s gun” literary conceit, is obviously there so that something bad can happen at the pool. Turns out the child/pool incident isn’t too bad, and I wonder if Callihan leaned a little into the drama there. But she wants us to focus on the lifeguard’s absence from the scene because she’s somewhere else with more thematic importance.
While I’m on the subject of picking on writing conceits, I’m not sure what I think about the occasional lapses into second person. Usually this is when Julia is the most inside her own head, and is trying to piece together a sense of purpose for herself through all these threads of past and present experiences. There’s another digression where she defines the word “storm,” after the characters realize one is set to strike in their area, where it starts with the literal translation and then moves into the emotional, given the events of the story. As a navel gazer myself, I thought they could be well written and thought provoking, if a little bit indulgent.
One area where I think Callihan shone in the narrative is through physical description of geography. Julia’s childhood and teenage years took place in rural Oklahoma, whereas she’s living a significant portion of her adult life in moneyed Connecticut. Both places feel so alive and vivid in the story, almost like they are characters unto themselves.
And just in case it’s not too on the nose here, there’s an in-narrative reference to Updike. :P But hey, when was family/personal drama NOT in style? Julia’s backstory, and perhaps even her desires, when it gets more specific than her fear of growing old and inconsequential, are different from my own. But this existential self-absorption, and the relationships to those in our closest orbit, are what make up the meat of most of our lives. I enjoyed dipping into this little slice.
December 14, 2019
I started this novella thinking it would just be about well-to-do people trapped in a vacation home and going through the typical living-room-drama plot markers, but it cuts deeper than that. The Couples is really about what happens to people who let the ugly parts of themselves fester, and about the lust and avarice that consumes wealthy people whose lives are otherwise empty. It's also written with poetic grace that sets it well apart from other books in this oeuvre.
July 30, 2019
3.5 Stars - a super tightly written novella about midlife crises from a woman's POV, a rebuttal to/response to John Updike and the Rabbit novels that I really dug. The main character feels the lust has left her marriage, and as her birthday approaches a couples party at her waterfront Connecticut mansion is planned. One of the men in attendance, other than her husband, has been very flirty towards her and the spark of passion occupies her thoughts. However, at the same time, she has vivid flashbacks to her life as a teenager in Oklahoma and an unwanted pregnancy.
There is a fantastic sense of setting and I loved all the Updike allusions/rebuttals/jokes. The tone is perfect - a slightly edgier Gioconda Belli.
There is a fantastic sense of setting and I loved all the Updike allusions/rebuttals/jokes. The tone is perfect - a slightly edgier Gioconda Belli.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews