If you are a regular listener to this program…or the Book Show…you know Joe has a soft spot for the Irish novel. Months ago, he began hearing about this new book taking Ireland by storm. It has now landed in the US. Caroline O’Donoghue’s very funny novel, "The Rachel Incident," is about friends, lovers, Ireland in chaos, and a young woman desperately trying to manage all three.
Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever.
O’Donoghue says one of the things she wanted to do is to explore how friendships develop differently now as compared to a few generations ago.