Goodreads asked Sarah Shell Teague:

Who is your favorite fictional couple, and why?

Sarah Shell Teague Thanks for this intriguing and opportunity-providing question. The first point I must make is I choose to narrow the selection down to a happily married couple. But the second point I make is that happily married couples aren’t inherently interesting-readers need tension and conflict to remain engaged. And that’s preferable theoretically; we all have enough tension and conflict in our relationships that we wouldn’t want to live like _Cat on a Hot Tin Roof_’s Brick and Maggie.
I also thought of many unconventional couplings in favorite works: Sancho Panza and Don Quixote in _Don Quixote_, George and Lenny in _Of Mice and Men_, Mattie Ross and Rooster Cogburn in _True Grit_. Couples in favorite books, like Johnny and Katy Nolan in _A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_, aren’t what make the novel one of my favorites. And any of Jane Austen’s protagonists would be cliché. To celebrate a couple who demonstrates love at its finest, love happily sacrificed for the beloved’s benefit, I would go with Mr. and Mrs. James Dillingham Young, also known as Della and Jim in O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi.”

flag