The Rachel Incident: A novel
![](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41q-vqQiFZL._SL500_.jpg)
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - A USA TODAY BESTSELLER - A brilliantly funny novel about friends, lovers, Ireland in chaos, and a young woman desperately trying to manage all three - "O'Donoghue deepens the familiar coming-of-age premise with riveting moral complications." --People "If you've ever been unsure what to do with your degree in English; if you've ever wondered when the rug-buying part of your life will start...if you've ever loved the wrong person, or the right person at the wrong time...In short, if you've ever been young, you will love The Rachel Incident like I did." --Gabrielle Zevin, New York Times best-selling author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it's love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them. When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, James helps her devise a reading at their local bookstore, with the goal that she might seduce him afterwards. But Fred has other desires. So begins a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred, and Fred's glamorous, well-connected, bourgeois wife. Aching with unrequited love, shot through with delicious, sparkling humor, The Rachel Incident is a triumph.
Show more
BUY THE BOOK
Community Reviews
Ireland, two best friends, James, Carey, and Rachel. Friendship, growing up, coming out, being poor as a young adult. Professors who screw their students. The ending was so satisfying!!
Show more
3.25 ⭐️ can’t really put my finger on my feelings on this book. I did enjoy it, but it wasn’t my favorite. It’s a book club book and I’m not sure it has enough substance to really provoke much of a discussion but somehow simultaneously too deep of things to not provoke a controversial discussion?
Show more
See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.