Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"O'Donoghue [has] got my full attention....
The Rachel Incident offers a tender reflection on those
20-something friendships that leave a permanent imprint....One of the
many lovable things about this novel is O'Donoghue's kindhearted
perspective on the awkwardness of the college years....Profoundly
satisfying....O'Donoghue has found a way to tell this story in scenes
both heartbreaking and funny. She illuminates these Irish lives with a
light all her own." Ron Charles, The Washington Post
Review
"The Rachel Incident is my favorite kind of novel:
charming and complex, with flawed and extremely lovable characters whom
you're rooting for page after delicious page. A must-read!" Elin Hilderbrand, #1 best-selling author of The Five-Star Weekend
Review
"Two 20-something roommates become enmeshed with an older married couple
in this smart and colorful outing from O'Donoghue....In addition to the
interpersonal drama, O'Donoghue pulls no punches in her depiction of
the abortion crisis in Ireland during the period, showing how women
either traveled abroad or resorted to illegal and potentially dangerous
methods to terminate pregnancies. Key to it all is O'Donoghue's spot-on
portrayal of Rachel's youthful yearning....In O'Donoghue's world,
there's plenty to fall in love with." Publishers Weekly
About the Author
CAROLINE O'DONOGHUE is the
New York Times best-selling author of
All Our Hidden Gifts, her YA debut fantasy, which has been published in more than twenty territories around the world. She has written for
The Times and
The Guardian, and is the host of an award-winning podcast, Sentimental Garbage. She was born in Ireland and lives in London.
The Rachel Incident is her first adult novel to be published in the U.S.