The Rachel Incident

James Devlin is Rachel’s best friend. His impoverished mother married a violent addict, and she spent James’s childhood moving him and his older sister from place to place to avoid their father and give them some semblance of stability. He was sexually abused as a child by a friend of the family, though he rarely mentions the incident. He is a gay man but remains closeted until well into his 20s. When Rachel meets James, he covers his insecurity about his working-class background and his sexuality by using humor and charm to win people over. He is funny and well-liked, though not conventionally handsome: “He was sort of runty, with big eyes and big black brows on a face that was either elfin or bloated depending on the week he was having. He had a nose like an old man’s, with deep indentations at his nostrils” (26). Rachel sees him as an effervescent, charismatic figure, and it takes time for her to realize that he also has insecurities. Like Rachel, James spends much of his youth using Experimentation as a Means of Self-Exploration, especially exploration of his sexuality.

James struggles to find love and is deeply affected by The Intensity of First Love, which he finds with Frederick Byrne. Though he knows Byrne is married and much older, he believes that Byrne loves him. After the affair, he and Rachel describe Byrne as a “tourist” who loves to visit their lives but does not truly want to live there. Though he comes out, leaves Ireland, and has a successful career, he still never has long-lasting romantic relationships. However, as an adult, he maintains deep and varied friendships and finds fulfillment through his loved ones.

The novel also traces James’s journey into a career as a working writer. Though his lack of education and his class background are against him, he manages to beat the odds through hard work. He wins an internship, moves to New York, and establishes himself as a writer for film and television. Unlike young Rachel, who had very little direction, James understands that he has to pursue a career and fight for it since it will not be handed to him.

James Carey is the love interest and eventual husband of Rachel Murray. He represents The Intensity of First Love as well as the promise of lasting love. Carey is from Northern Ireland and has red-blond hair. He is shorter than Rachel, “compact, square and muscled” and “built like a Jack Russell terrier” (103). Carey is the youngest son in a working-class family and was diagnosed with lupus as a child. Because of his illness, he was spoiled, and his family made excuses for him constantly. When Rachel meets him, he is 29 and struggles to hold down a steady job. He is cognizant of his faults and sees them with humor but does not work to change things. Though he and Rachel have a passionate love affair, they are bad for each other in many ways. Rachel reflects, “The thing about me and Carey is that we were both dirty. By which I mean: we were both perverted, and we were both unclean” (84). Together they tend to forget housekeeping, school, or work and stay wrapped up in their insular world.

Like Rachel, Carey matures through the course of the novel, though much of his journey takes place off the page when he and Rachel are broken up. He initially begins this journey when his mother is ill, and he moves home to care for her and his father. He and Rachel break up after the move when she tells him she was planning to have an abortion but never reached out to tell him. To him, this is a sign that Rachel fundamentally misunderstands love. He tells her, “When you love someone, you sign up for the whole thing. Even if they’re grumpy or weird or sick or if they’re pregnant, Rachel. It does not matter how many things you have on already. You love the whole person” (231). During the breakup, he becomes a physiotherapist and gets his lupus under control.

When he and Rachel reunite, she recognizes him as a healthier version of the old Carey. He is no longer jealous of James Devlin, and the two of them see themselves as essential but different parts of Rachel’s life. In Devlin’s words, they are part of “the endless continuum of Jameses looking out for you” (276). Carey, Devlin, and Rachel have all realized that different kinds of love exist and that their relationships are healthy enough to sustain them all.

Fred Byrne is a professor at University College Cork and the love interest of James Devlin and Rachel Murray, though he is married to Deenie Harrington-Byrne. In 2009, he is 38 years old and the most popular lecturer in the English Literature department, though Rachel admits this is likely because of his gender and physicality rather than his talent. He “dressed like he was impersonating a university professor” and was “a very big person, 6’5 and extremely wide, a farmer’s build” (30). Rachel’s initial crush on him is shallow and quickly overshadowed by his love affair with James Devlin.

Byrne is a selfish character who prioritizes his own comfort over the feelings of those around him. He carries on an affair with James for several years despite being in an affectionate marriage with Deenie, who loves him deeply. Once he begins the affair with James, he ignores Rachel in class and stops treating her like a regular student. When Deenie believes he is sleeping with Rachel, he does not confess, preferring to let Rachel take the fallout rather than admit to Deenie that he is bisexual. He Holds to the lie even when Rachel asks for money for an abortion. Rachel is infuriated by his behavior and later tells James that Byrne was a tourist in their lives: “Dr. Byrne wanted to visit our youth, our poverty, our liveliness. But he didn’t want to live there” (214). Byrne’s selfish behavior is the result of the internalized anti-gay bias that prevents him from admitting his bisexuality. Unlike James and Rachel, who learn and grow through their experimentation, Byrne compartmentalizes his sexuality, refusing to examine it or himself.

In later life, he and Deenie mend their relationship through therapy. On a vacation to South Carolina to celebrate their anniversary, he contracts a rare amoeba while swimming and is in a coma. Deenie nurses him through the illness, but he never regains his memories and the full use of his faculties. She remains his caregiver but is romantically involved with another man. As an adult, Rachel thinks of their marriage as exemplifying the many ways people can make love work. She comes to understand that what is between them is a kind of unconventional but lasting bond.