The Rachel Incident de Caroline O'Donoghue
In 2010, Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James. It’s love at first sight. James and Rachel move in together in a matter of days, and they live their friendship with all the ardour of their twenties. 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 nothing goes as planned. So begins a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred, and Fred’s wife Deenie.
This is a lovely novel about the total chaos of being in your twenties, about love and, above all, about friendship.
Rachel and James are messy, they're selfish, they're a bit lost, they don't really know what to do with their feelings, and that makes them terribly endearing. There is an air of nostalgia about the story, but the student years are not idealised. The context of Ireland's economic recession in the 2010s weighs heavily on the whole novel. Rachel and James are frivolous, but not carefree.
I really like the structure of the novel, which, although very classic, works perfectly: we begin with Rachel as an adult, married and pregnant woman, who, at the turn of a conversation, sees the ghosts of her twenties resurface. She then tells us everything, from the moment she met James, that led up to the famous ‘Rachel incident’ that changed their lives. I'm often disappointed by the endings of novels, which I find too abrupt or too phoned-in. This one is perfect.
It's very well written, very funny, tender when it needs to be, sometimes mean, but always very thoughtful and relatable.
Title : The Rachel Incident
Author : Caroline O'Donoghue
Editor : Virago
Genre : Novel
Pages : 320
Target price : 15,50 € (paperback), 25,50 € (hardcover)
ISBN : 978-0349013565
Publication date : June 27 2023
