Never a Dull Moment: Humorous and Harrowing Misadventures of Youth

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I read The Rachel Incident by Carolyn O’Donoghue following two intense books, Lady Tan’s Circle of Women and Wellness. My sense of O’Donoghue’s book is of it feeling like the sorbet course sometimes served between the entree and main course to cleanse the palate. It was piquant, refreshing, lively, humorous, poignant, energetic, and very entertaining. The story starts out with a 20 year old, tall, zoftig Irish woman Rachel who needed “to be in love and to be taken seriously.” She yearns to be independent from her family noting, “It’s not that we weren’t capable of warmth, as a family. But we were regularly seduced by the concept of being wronged.”

Rachel is on the verge of attending the university in Cork, just as the economy has taken a serious downturn affecting her parent’s dental office, making it impossible for them to cover her fees, and requiring her to work in order to support herself at school. She lands a job in a book store, and meets her new best friend (not romantic), James, ultimately deciding to share living quarters to reduce costs. She determines the best major for herself is English because she’s good at it and notes, “I wanted to be caught in a beam of sunlight looking elegant and melancholy, possibly writing a poem at the same time. I tried this for years and it took me until my mid-twenties to realise that it’s strictly for short women.”

The balance of the book is about Rachel’s never a dull moment, humorous and harrowing misadventures involving one of her professors, his wife, the bookstore, her roommate, her boyfriend, “The Rachel Incident,” her vocational pilgrimage, search for meaning, and the dream of a happy ending. I read the Kindle edition of the book with the fantastic Audible narration by Clara Harte. This was my first book by Carolyn O’Donoghue, but won’t be my last. 

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