Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jun 2023
304 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
A brilliantly funny novel about friends, lovers, Ireland in chaos, and a young woman desperately trying to manage all three.
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.
"A college student gets caught in the middle of a friend's romance in this delightful Irish novel…. This deliciously complex set of entanglements lays the groundwork for the novel...But its true joys lie in the tremendously witty characters and their relationships...Sensational."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"O'Donoghue gives readers a quick-reading slow build that rests comfortably on strong characters, Rachel's conversational narration, and a crisp capture of the 2010s, from recession through Ireland's legalization of abortion and all the many shifts, mini to tectonic, therein."
—Booklist (starred review)
"Two 20-something roommates become enmeshed with an older married couple in this smart and colorful outing from O'Donoghue....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
"If you've ever had a literary internship that didn't really pay you; if you've ever contemplated writing a screenplay with a friend; 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 avoided going home or run out of things to say to your parents; if you've ever built your life and your personality around a friend; 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
"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, New York Times bestselling author of I Was Told There'd Be Cake and Cult Classic
"Caroline O'Donoghue shines a laser beam on young adulthood, particularly the crazy intensity of those messy, beautiful friendships forged in the fires of romantic crisis. The Rachel Incident made me nostalgic for my early twenties. But even more than that, it made me wish I could go back and hug the person I was back then and tell her she'll be okay."
—Lauren Fox, New York Times best-selling author of Send For Me
"By turns hilarious and heartfelt, breezy and bittersweet, The Rachel Incident is a full-throated, big-hearted romp through early adulthood."
—Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times best-selling author of Orphan Train
This information about The Rachel Incident was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
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.
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