The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue
Summary
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.
Book Setting: Cork, Ireland
Chambers
Shandon Street
The English Market
Fermoy
Douglas
Sober Lane
Travers Street
University College Cork
The Alibi Bar + Kitchen
Butter Exchange
Shandon Bells & Tower of St. Anne
Crawford Art Gallery
Patrick Street
Bishop Lucey Park
Sunday’s Well
Fitzgerald Park
Bishopstown
French Church Street
Elephant and Castle
Old Kent Road
Charing Cross Road
G-A-Y Bar
Reviews
“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
“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
“Caroline O’Donoghue, where have you been all my life? The Rachel Incident is a transportive joy, a superhighway to young friendship. Big-hearted, witty and expertly crafted — I want to live inside this book.”
—Sloane Crosley