Malin Hay

In Exciting Times, Naoise Dolan’s first book, the choice presented to bisexual women – surrender to the world’s expectations and get with a man, or follow your desires and risk forfeiting power and ‘normality’ – is the central moral issue. There is never any real doubt that the protagonist, Ava, will eventually choose to ignore the world’s expectations. In The Happy Couple there’s more suspense, and more confusion.

On BookTok the cycle goes: rating books, simping over them, bringing ‘overrated’ books down a peg, and then rehabilitating them when the backlash goes too far. But there is a worry that we’re all being taken for a ride.

The second series opens with Natasha Lyonne striding through the streets of New York accompanied by Depeche Mode’s ‘Personal Jesus’. (She’s a very good strider, all forceful bounce and hands thrust in pockets.) No time seems to have elapsed, but we soon discover it’s 2022 and Nadia is about to turn forty. The time warp effect, heightened by Nadia’s steampunk jacket and shaggy red hair, is multiplied in the funhouse mirror of the new season’s plot.

In February, the price of coated papers was up 78 per cent from last year. The manufacturers may have wanted higher prices, but dramatic hikes are bad for the industry’s stability as well as for buyers. Other industries are affected too. Supplies of label substrate – the shiny material from which you peel labels – are depleting, which could affect the availability of everything from apples to Xanax.