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The Rachel Incident: A novel
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.
"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.
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Community Reviews
thenextgoodbook.com
What’s it about?
Rachel is creeping into middle age when she decides to take a look back at her life in Cork, Ireland in 2009- and then decides to write about it. She was 21-years-old back then and struggling to work and finish college. James was a new employee at the bookshop where she worked and they quickly became friends and then flatmates. This is the story of that year.
What did it make me think about?
Relationships and the perspective that time brings.
Should I read it?
I seem to be enjoying a lot of Irish writers lately…. This book just grew on me. It is not really plot-driven and none of the characters are solidly good people- but they are so real (perhaps messed-up at times) that you want to know what is going to happen to them. My favorite character by far is Carey who comes in and out of the story as Rachel’s sometime boyfriend. The book focuses on the friendship between James and Rachel who are neither one always likable. Their friendship is complicated, intense, and really interesting. In James, I was relieved to not find a stereotypical “gay best friend”. James was a fully drawn character with his own hopes, dreams, and selfishness. That he was queer was essential to the story- and also not really what the story was about. This seems in all its messiness like a friendship that mattered to both Rachel and James- and by the end of the book it mattered to me as well. Although this story drags in the middle, it picks back up and I was happy to read the last 30 pages and see how time has treated Rachel and James. Read this one.
Quote-
“I don’t know who I was trying to impress. I did not want a boyfriend; I did want romance. I wanted passion; I did not want to be someone who was known as easy. I was desperate to be touched; I was terrified of being ruined.”
What’s it about?
Rachel is creeping into middle age when she decides to take a look back at her life in Cork, Ireland in 2009- and then decides to write about it. She was 21-years-old back then and struggling to work and finish college. James was a new employee at the bookshop where she worked and they quickly became friends and then flatmates. This is the story of that year.
What did it make me think about?
Relationships and the perspective that time brings.
Should I read it?
I seem to be enjoying a lot of Irish writers lately…. This book just grew on me. It is not really plot-driven and none of the characters are solidly good people- but they are so real (perhaps messed-up at times) that you want to know what is going to happen to them. My favorite character by far is Carey who comes in and out of the story as Rachel’s sometime boyfriend. The book focuses on the friendship between James and Rachel who are neither one always likable. Their friendship is complicated, intense, and really interesting. In James, I was relieved to not find a stereotypical “gay best friend”. James was a fully drawn character with his own hopes, dreams, and selfishness. That he was queer was essential to the story- and also not really what the story was about. This seems in all its messiness like a friendship that mattered to both Rachel and James- and by the end of the book it mattered to me as well. Although this story drags in the middle, it picks back up and I was happy to read the last 30 pages and see how time has treated Rachel and James. Read this one.
Quote-
“I don’t know who I was trying to impress. I did not want a boyfriend; I did want romance. I wanted passion; I did not want to be someone who was known as easy. I was desperate to be touched; I was terrified of being ruined.”
The characters and the plot were a hot mess in a way that was entertaining, relatable, and sometimes made me uncomfy. A bit slow at the start but the end made it worth it for me.
- los personajes me han parecido muy egoístas, cobardes y miserables. Parece que el libro quiere justificar que cuando no tienes dinero tampoco necesitas ni dignidad ni honor.
- Parece que Rachel omite constantemente la verdad: no le dice a Carrey que se van a Londres, ni que va a acortar su hijo (menuda hija de p***), no le dice a James que su ex-amante se está muriendo, no aclara nada a la pareja sobre la infidelidad del profesor salvo en las últimas diez páginas cuando en realidad no se está jugando nada. Solo dice la verdad si es sin riesgo alguno.
- el libro está bien escrito y es divertido pero los personajes son realmente miserables.
- incluso la forma en que Rachel es totalmente ajena a la miseria de su familia. Aunque su madre le dice años después que nada hubiera podido hacer, a mi me parece más una forma de limpiar su consciencia siendo funcional porque lo pasado pasado está, que una verdad.
- Rachel es egoísta, cleptómana y engreída. La única virtud que le encuentro es que ha sabido ser independiente creando su nueva vida en Londres y superando la pobreza. Una historia de superación personal para personas trabajadoras pero no necesariamente virtuosas.
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