The Rachel Incident - Caroline O'Donoghue - ★★★.¾

AUTHOR: Caroline O'Donoghue

GENRE: Literary Fiction

RATING: 3.75 stars.

In a Nutshell: Go into this with the right expectations. It is a literary fiction with shades of bildungsroman, and not exactly a “brilliantly funny” general fiction as the blurb calls it. Handles its plot and characters pretty well.

Story Synopsis:

When Rachel Murray was working at a bookstore as a nineteen-year-old college student, she met James Devlin, a self-declared heterosexual though Rachel suspects otherwise. They bond as colleagues and soon become roommates. Navigating the poor economy and broken hearts together, Rachel and James are not just best friends but each other’s emotional support system.

When Rachel falls in love with her married English professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, James helps her make a plan to lure him to their bookstore with a reading of his nonfiction work. However, what happens next changes their equation and lays the foundation for the ‘Rachel incident’ and its aftermath.

The story is set in the city of Cork, and comes to us through the first person voice of Rachel, who is narrating to us about the incidents of a decade ago retrospectively.

I started reading this novel expecting a funny story about friends and lovers, because the very first sentence of the blurb makes a grand declaration on these lines. While there is a lot of focus on friendship and romantic relationships, the story is not funny, though I must also accept that what counts as humour is a matter of individual preference. I found this book a semi-serious one, focussing on choices, instincts, and decisions. It also highlights how things beyond our control, such as the economy, governmental policies, and other people’s mistaken assumptions, end up affecting our lives. Once I changed my track and read this novel as a work of literary fiction, I enjoyed it much better..

This is not a novel where there are great conflicts or twists. As I kept reading, the percentage indicator on my Kindle kept going up, but I still felt like nothing much had happened in the plot. But at the end of the book, I realised that a whole lot happened and passed me by subtly. I suppose this is still better than reading a book where too much happens but the percentage completed stat moves up at a snail’s pace.

The title becomes clear only towards the end of the novel. So for a long time, I kept wondering what the ‘Rachel incident’ referred to. But once the reference is explained, the whole title-plot combo makes a lot of sense.

As the lead who is just about twenty, Rachel is a complicated character. Impetuous, wild, and naïve, she acts her age and takes decisions from her heart than from her head. As she is a sheltered young adult who takes some idiotic decisions, it is tough for us to like her. If you are someone who needs to like their characters, this story is a tricky one because Rachel does quite a lot of things to ensure that you are irked by rather than enamoured of her.

What helps matters somewhat is the choice of retrospective narration. Rachel herself recounts her life story to us ten years after the “Rachel incident.” At thirty-two, she is slightly more mature and her account includes her opinion on the events that occurred as well as some amount of foreshadowing. That said, I didn’t understand whom she was narrating her story to because it doesn’t look like this was her journal or a book. She also breaks the fourth wall multiple times and speaks to us readers directly. A bit of clarity on this point would have helped.

The other key characters – James Devlin the gay roommate (he’s the kind of friend everyone would love to have!), James Carey the unreliable boyfriend, Fred Byrnes the professor with secrets, and Deenie the professor’s wife and a successful woman in her own right – are all interesting. As we get the story for Rachel’s first person perspective, all we know of these characters is what Rachel chooses to tell us. This gives us a limited idea of their personality, and is a minor hurdle in getting to understand them better. James Devlin’s arc would have been especially interesting to explore with his closet homosexuality and his screenwriting dreams. Then again, the book is titled ‘The Rachel Incident’, so it is obvious that we are meant to focus on only Rachel’s pov.

The plot uses Ireland quite effectively in its narrative. I enjoy books that don’t only mention settings but actually incorporate them in the storyline. Irish habits, local places and hangouts, the financial crisis, their opinion on England, their rigid policies against abortion – all find mention in the story.

The ending works excellently for this story, as it is not a typical HEA. There are some loose ends that are left with just enough clues for us to guess at what might happen next to most characters. I loved the ending, but I can see that it won’t satisfy every reader.

I see many reviews referring this novel to Sally Rooney fans, probably because both Rooney and O’Donoghue are Irish, and both focus on broken young adults trying to survive if not thrive in Ireland. But the one book of Sally Rooney that I read didn’t work for me at all, while this was a relative winner. So I’d recommend this even if you aren’t a Sally Rooney fan. And hey, O’Donoghue, unlike Rooney, uses quotation marks – definitely a huge plus.

If you read between the lines of my feedback so far, you will understand that there was a lot of realignment of expectations involved in my reading of this character-oriented novel. Adjusting my focus took some time, but once I did, the book clicked nicely for me. I could have done with fewer cuss words, but this is an individual choice and not really a shortcoming of the novel itself.

Recommended to literary fiction readers interested in a quirky story with complicated characters and realistic life problems. Though not exactly a coming-of-age novel, it works well as one because of Rachel’s life choices.

My thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for the DRC of “The Rachel Incident”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.