Lilibet Bombshell's Reviews > The Rachel Incident

In 1998 (stay with me, here), a movie starring Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd came out called “The Object of My Affection”. In a rough nutshell, it’s about a woman who gets pregnant and decides she’d rather raise the baby with her gay best friend than with the father of the baby and the gay best friend agrees. The issue is, of course, that committing oneself to being a surrogate parent and platonic significant other at the same time is a lot to ask of someone who comes to realize they want to fall in love for themself.

I thought of that movie while I was reading The Rachel Incident not only because they both involve a straight woman and a gay man being platonic besties, but also because their friendship is also as codependent as the one in the movie. And there’s a quote in “The Object of my Affection” that serves The Rachel Incident well:

“Don't fix your life so that you're left alone right when you come to the middle of it.”

This quote, I think, sums up part of the problem and the solution for besties Rachel and James in O’Donoghue’s dramedy, set largely in Cork County, Ireland, starting in 2009 and goes on into the late 2010s but ends somewhat nebulously prior to COVID. Rachel and James meet one day when she comes into work at the bookshop she’s worked at for two years and James is a new employee. They hit it off and become roommates. He tells her he’s straight, she thinks he’s lying but lets it go. She has a crush on one of her English professors anyway. One night at the bookstore after a book signing, she finds out for sure her roommate is gay when she sees him in the arms of someone unexpected. That night sets off a chain of events that deeply affects both of their lives for the next two years at least, sometimes testing their friendship to the breaking point. In the end, it’s Rachel who ends up paying the most for that sequence of events, even though she ultimately had nothing to do with it except keep a secret for her best friend who wasn’t ready to come completely out of the closet yet.

O’Donoghue has a great talent for dialogue. I found myself swinging from laughing to tearing up at some of the dialogue passages in this book. Her talent for writing Rachel’s inner narrative and keeping the character consistent while allowing for growth and development was also very nice. What I found myself not liking was how the book swung back and forth in time and tense without warning, since it was being told like Rachel is telling someone a story. That particular narrative structure just doesn’t fit the book well, especially when O’Donoghue doesn’t always tell us readers what year it is when she goes back to talking about the past.

There’s also somewhat of a cultural barrier, due to this book being based in recent Irish history not many international readers (like this US one) would be familiar with. I can keep up with the Irish and British slang just fine, but I know nothing of Irish politics because I’ve been too busy worrying about the mess we have over here. So a lot of the nuances of what the characters are talking about when it comes to laws and referendums was lost on me. Now, the debate about abortion and birth control is something that’s timely no matter where you are in the world, I think, because those are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights. Human rights are a global issue. So I definitely picked up on all of that, but when it comes to anything else political in Ireland I’m pretty much useless. That could’ve affected my reading experience, I’m sure.

If you want to read about everlasting friendship, unrequited love, loving the wrong person, loving the right person at the wrong time, second chances, how English degrees don’t prepare you for a career in which you can use it, and how people grow into becoming the people they’re meant to be, this is a great book. Just beware that if you don’t know that much about Ireland you might either need to just accept that for what it is or look it up.

I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.

File Under:Coming of Age/ Literary Fiction/LGBTQ Fiction