The strengths of this book lie primarily in the reader’s ability to more or less relate to the main character. The narrator, titular Rachel, is in her 30s, married and pregnant. She’s a journalist living in England, originally from Ireland. In passing she learns about the serious illness of a former professor, and this prompts her to reflect on her life in her early 20s. In particular, she focuses on the period of her life as she completed college. In her final semester, she takes a seminar from the aforementioned professor, which is part of a sequence of events that, in aggregate, become a formative experience for Rachel. The sort of event, or series of events, that take place and alter who you are – reveal you at your best and your worst. And then, as events that take place in your 20s are wont to do, it disappears, absorbed into the miasma that is you. Everything that felt so overwhelming at the time becomes just another memory.
Basic plot summary: Rachel in the past is a young woman in her 20s living in Cork, finishing University. She doesn’t really have a great deal of direction in her life, but she loves books and so she’s finishing school as an English major, and works at a bookstore. She meets a co-worker, James, and they hit it off as friends. She gently nudges him out of the closet while pursuing her own love life. James and Rachel become entangled with one of her professors, whose seminar is an important part of her final semester at college.
I think this book is much more about what it means to and what it feels like to look back into the past, rather than about the events themselves. I am not sure that we are meant to really like Rachel (especially Rachel in her 20s), or James, or their relationship. I think she exposes their warts (or the teeth in their blowjob, as Jacqueline Novak might say – please watch Get On Your Knees, sort of like Nanette but with blow jobs). This is all the better to understand the distance you travel, waking up to the impact you have on your own life and the life of others.
MILD SPOILER: the point at which Byrne’s wife names the incident, calls it The Rachel Incident – Rachel must realize that she plays into other people’s memories, too. Up until that point, we have witnessed someone almost fully self absorbed – and now she must come face to face with the fact that her choices do in fact impact others.
I think the fact that I read this right after Prophet Song had an impact on on my feelings about it – it was a comfort diving back into a text that used paragraph breaks and quotation marks! I think this would make for an interesting book club pick, if your book club likes books that are less plot, more vibes – its well written, accessible to read and could inspire strong opinions / conversation.