Book review: A look through the lens of reality TV

In the unexpected and shocking story of 'One Perfect Couple' Ruth Ware has something to say about reality games and invasive misogyny

Author Ruth Ware makes a compelling critique of reality TV shows and invasive misogyny. Picture: Gemma Day

• One Perfect Couple 
• Ruth Ware 
• Simon & Schuster, pb €14.99

This is a humdinger of a book. The premise of Ruth Ware’s One Perfect Couple, however, is not alluring, as the plot centres on a new reality TV game set on a desert island. 

Five couples will stay in straw-roofed chalets in a new luxury, as-yet-to-be-opened, resort.

There is to be a series of challenges, and after each one the losing person will be sent home, leaving a singleton among the paired lovers. 

The red blinking eyes of automatic cameras will register the action in all rooms except the en suites.

Would-be participants must sign away their privacy, along with other legal rights.

The narrator, Lyla, is encouraged by her wannabe actor boyfriend, Nico, to accompany him on the trip, as he thinks it will be his breakthrough to fame. 

His nom-de-plume is Fantasy First Boyfriend, whilst she is aka Girl-Next-Door-Fuckable. It is a big swallow for Lyla, who is a scientist specialising in virology.

But disappointment with her research results and the relentlessly grim English weather persuade her to consider a ‘holiday’ in the sun to recharge her batteries, and this offer might be a fun way to achieve that. 

There is no such thing as a free lunch, but Lyla could never have foreseen the events that follow her acceptance of the invitation.

Ware does not pretend that contestants of the One Perfect Couple game are going to have a lovely time. 

From the start, Lyla and Nico sense that they are not favoured and that some of the others are higher up the food chain.

Lyla is unable to resist feeling beauty-shamed, comparing herself with the sun-bronzed, gym-honed, bikini-line-waxed, manicured, and coiffed appearances of Conor and Zana, who seem to be the alphas.

Her awareness of being older and less physically attractive reassures her that she will lose out and go home within the two weeks allocated as annual leave by her professor. 

But the saying “best-laid plans of mice and men” has never been truer. Things go very much awry.

It is impossible to say much about the story as the plot is clever and complex, but the novel, unlike a gameshow, is unexpected and shocking. 

There is mention, within the text, of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, but this is not an update of that classic.

Ware has something to say about reality games and invasive misogyny. Lyla is asked, during her application, about her politics and status regarding feminism. 

While she might think, in her rational way, that these aspects of her personality will need to be repressed during campfire powwows with swimwear-clad peers, she will discover that they are to be her unique selling point.

Angelique, chic and French, is hiding manual labour assets beneath her salon-perfect fingernails while Santana’s strawberry blonde extensions present a ditziness that will not be borne out by her subsequent behaviour. 

Bambi-like Zana is the smallest and youngest in the group, but she is not necessarily going to be the weakest.

Ware does not present the men in such detail, perhaps because it is easy to state their attributes. 

They all, except Joel, present washboard torsos so that the only way to distinguish them is by their level of competitive aggression. Ware wants to comment on toxic masculinity.

Ware’s husband is a scientist, and, in her acknowledgements, she recommends marrying one. But in One Perfect Couple, science, in the form of virology, does not get much airtime. 

It is an anthropological study interested in human physicality and psychology. In this game, the only rule is: Survival of the fittest.

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