Great book alert! I just finished a fiction book, The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue, that took me by surprise for how much I liked it. After seeing the book recommended, I read in a synopsis that the story follows two college-age friends in Cork, Ireland in 2010; I immediately put the book on hold at the library. I studied abroad all of my junior year of college in Cork twenty years ago and loved it. I figured reading it would be a fun walk down memory lane regardless of what I thought of the book. I ended up both loving the story and enjoying the walk down memory lane.
A few weeks ago, I saw the book recommended at the end of a blog post by food writer Jenny Rosenstrach. I hadn’t seen or heard of the book anywhere else, but knew I wanted to check it out because of the setting.
In the book the narrator, Rachel, recollects the story from present-day London where she lives and works as a journalist. The bulk of the story is set in Cork during 2009-2010 where she’s in college at UCC (University College Cork) getting her degree in English, working in a bookstore, and living with her best friend James. I actually don’t want to give away too much of the story because I enjoyed the twists and turns!
A few notes- there is a little Irish specific lingo, but nothing that can’t be figured out or googled, haha.
Also, after reading the book I looked up some reviews on Amazon and saw someone who wrote:
I agree. (Irish writer Sally Rooney has quite a following after her hit book turned tv series Normal People.)
Last, Cork is portrayed as a fairly small city in the novel. And while compared to London or Dublin it is- it still is the second biggest city in the Republic of Ireland, with around 120,000 people. When I studied there, I went from a very small Liberal Arts College (Albion College), with a student population of 1,200 in the small city of Albion, MI to a university whose student population of around 20,000 felt large. So while I can understand the author’s view of the city as small, some of it is also the perspective.
Here are a few shots of my time in Ireland I dug out of old photo albums 🙂
Here’s a view of Cork near where I lived with the River Lee, St. Fin Barr’s Cathedral, and Beamish Brewery all in view.
Me in Dec 2001 riding bikes in Dingle (a southwest peninsula).
With my friend Kristin, who visited from home, in the student rental where I lived with another American and three Irish girls.
This is the restaurant where I waitressed for a bit to earn money for traveling. It was the best of the three short-lived restaurant jobs I had at various points there.
And thanks to my collecting habits, I even have a newspaper clipping from the college newspaper highlighting the waterpolo team I joined there. I was all about joining clubs (waterpolo, volleyball, mountaineering, and the St. Vincent de Paul society) as a way to not only meet people, but to have a discounted way to travel around Ireland 🙂
Well, thanks for taking this walk down memory lane with me! And while for a second I thought maybe I loved The Rachel Incident so much because of my experience in Cork, after looking up and seeing positive reviews in Kirkus, the NYT, and The Washington Post, I know it’s not just me that the book struck a chord with.
Maybe I'll Become a Farmer 