The trouble began while packing to meet my university-aged daughter in the middle of her summer trek along the Baltic coastline. I was weighing up bringing my review copy of Sophie White’s latest novel to read in-flight. Such a Good Couple is a story about three tight-knit couples reuniting for their annual, glamorous getaway only to discover each other’s relationships are unravelling.
Along with recognisable scenes of chaotic family life, White immediately flags that her book deals with difficult subjects, namely fertility struggles and eating disorders, in some harrowing scenes that the author approaches with sensitivity. I only opened the novel with the intention of reading a page or two, to decide whether to bring it along. Hours later, I found myself still sitting among unpacked belongings, riveted.
My daughter and I are a well-matched travelling pair; satisfied to walk, talk, eat and read. On our final night in a converted old train station, I cooked while she read a dense philosophical book at a table in the rustic kitchen. I was startled by a whoop of delight, next a mortified gasp. She has always been an expressive reader and I turned, curious to know what prompted such an animated reaction, and found she had picked up, and was racing through, White’s novel.
It surprised me to see her connecting with scenes of couples’ angst and parenthood hardships – my young scholar, so free of domestic worries. I was sure she would abandon the novel by teatime. She was still engrossed when we went to bed. (She only peeled herself away to discuss how she found this one of the few books to lay out the brutal realities of eating disorders.) I fell asleep and awoke at 3am as she was finishing. “I couldn’t leave without knowing,” she said. We stretched a hand across to one another and promised to talk in the morning.
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After we parted ways, while waiting for my return flight, I flipped through the pages and found my daughter’s handwriting in the margin: “My complaint with most pop fiction is that characters can feel over-exaggerated; here, they feel so real.” I couldn’t write a more suitable endorsement. White grabbed us in her skilful grip, then ruthlessly made us care.
