Protagonist Cathal dated a woman named Sabine. They're an older couple and seemed to have an amicable relationship, and was going to marry. However, they also seemed to be as different as chalk and cheese. Cathal is tight-fisted with money and owns few items in his home. Sabine doesn't mind spending some money on food and such, and owns a fair number of items, and those flooded her fiancé's house when she moved over.
“Did you think I would come with nothing?”
“It’s just a lot.” He tried to explain.
“A lot? I do not have so very much.”
“Just a lot to deal with.”
“What did you imagine?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Not this. Just not this.”
“I cannot understand,” she told him. “You knew I had to vacate the apartment at Rathgar by the end of the month. You asked me to come and live here with you, to marry you.”
“I just didn’t think it would be like this, is all,” he said. “I just thought about your being here and having dinner together, waking up with you. Maybe it’s just too much reality.”
Every line is simply a hint that the wedding won't happen. Or shouldn't happen. Cathal doesn't seem that into his girlfriend and fiancee. Marriage seems to be a convenient thing for him, or something that's a progression in life, a milestone. He didn't seem particularly happy. In fact, he was begrudging all the extra costs incurred with such an event, including resizing and customizing the engagement ring.
The wedding didn't happen. The relationship was over almost as soon as Sabine moved in. Cathal was more or less accused of being selfish. It really isn't a story about them at all. It's a story about mean and selfish heterosexual men all across the world who don't seem to treat women as nicely as they should. Well, Sabine burnt whatever she baked or cooked. She didn't seem to be very good at those. But she was also miffed that her fiancé never thanked her making him breakfast or dinner, or offered to pay for groceries. She called him misogynistic. And dumped him.
One incident recounted by the protagonist made me decide that he has misogynistic tendencies, or at least doesn't know he has them. He is after all, raised by a father who is one, and his mother allows him and her sons to get away with it.
The one thing he did have now, is Mathilde the cat, who wouldn't give two hoots about what he does as long as he feeds her, gets fresh water, and changes her litter box. In an interview, the author said,
Maybe I wanted to explore why misogyny no longer works for men in our changing society. Of course I know that it never actually did, that all it really did was destroy relationships and prevent us from having a democracy—but what it meant to Cathal on the day that should or could have been a joyous one spoke to me, and I just had to go in there and take a look at the world through his eyes, follow what his gaze fell on and all the disappointment that was locked up in his heart. It also seemed apt to look at what our misogynistic society had done to him. I can’t say I like Cathal, but this man is lost and struggling—and lost and struggling people make for good central characters. Maybe he’s learned something from Sabine. Maybe he’ll put his hand in his pocket the next time. Maybe there won’t be a next time.
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