The Rachel Incident

In 2021, Rachel lives in London and works as a journalist for an expat Irish newspaper, The Hibernian Post. The paper sends her to cover The Late Late Toy Show, an annual Irish program where children review toys for other children to put on their Christmas list. Though it’s not a popular program globally, it is very popular in Ireland and with expats, hence her paper’s coverage. The show is being broadcast at an expat gathering in a SoHo bar.

Walking to the bar, Rachel reflects that it has been a long time since she attended one of these gatherings. She spent several years covering the fight to legalize abortion in Ireland and made many contacts at these gatherings. Now that the repeal has passed, she no longer sees as many expats. She is also seven months pregnant and beginning to feel tired and rundown, so she has spent less time at social gatherings.

At the bar, she is offered a seat at a table of young men. One of them taps her on the leg and asks her something, but she cannot make out all of what he is saying. She assumes he is asking about her best friend, James Devlin, who is now a writer for a popular talk show and lives in New York. However, the man corrects her and tells her he was asking about Dr. Frederick Byrne, their college professor.

Rachel starts to panic upon hearing Byrne’s name. Though this is not revealed to the reader, she is panicking because Byrne had an extramarital affair with James. When his wife discovered he was cheating, Rachel was assumed to be the affair partner, and Byrne, wanting to hide his sexuality, went along with the accusation. This gossip and her guilt about not correcting his wife drove Rachel out of Ireland.

The young man tells her that Byrne is gravely ill and in a coma. Rachel thinks that she needs to call James.

Rachel meets James in 2009 during her last year at University College Cork. They are both working at O’Connor Books, a struggling independent bookstore. James comes up to her at the register and begins gossiping immediately. He thinks she is Sabrina, the woman he had his last shift with. Rachel is shocked that he is so friendly with her and eager to continue the friendship. She had hoped to find other friends who loved to read and have high-minded, dramatic conversations about art, literature, and life at the bookstore. Instead, everyone she works with keeps to themselves and reads in the break room. James seems more real to her than anyone else she has met there.

After the shift, she walks to meet up with her boyfriend, Jonathan, and James keeps her company en route. He makes a series of guesses about her life and teases her about being middle class and having a father who is a dentist. He also makes fun of her for dating Jonathan. Rachel lets him get away with these insults, in part because James is so charming and in part because she and Jonathan have a stale relationship. She believes she is in love with him, but they mostly spend their time together mocking other people or things that are popular. They are both from Cork and resent the fact that they go to the university there as well. James leaves at the door, declining to meet Jonathan.

Weeks later, Rachel is angry because James has not been friendly to her since. She gives him the cold shoulder at work and one day he responds by trying to get her attention. When she refuses to speak to him, he taps her on the back of her knee, making her fall. She shoves him and a book falls off the shelf, hitting him in the eye and making him bleed. She is horrified, but James just laughs, saying, “There she is!” As an apology, she takes him to dinner. Over the meal, she confesses that she works so much because her father has lost all his money in the recession and can no longer pay her school fees. James suggests that the two of them move in together, and she agrees. In later years, they will joke that this was the only fight they have ever had and that it was really with Sabrina since James still did not know Rachel’s name.

Rachel returns home and announces this plan to her horrified parents. As an adult in 2021, expecting her own child, she understands this shock and hopes that her son will not be this callous. In 2009, she does not think of her parents as people with feelings and does not realize that they are until she moves out.

Rachel and James move in together to a house on Shandon Street, a historic part of Cork that is picturesque but rundown. Rachel has never lived anywhere but home and naively believes that they are getting a great deal on the cheap rent. With adult hindsight, she realizes that the house was mostly unheated and falling apart. She and James unpack and bond over his ancient iPod breaking down and playing the same song repeatedly. This dispels the tension, and they make fun of each other’s possessions and dance as they unpack.

Jonathan comes to visit, and she introduces the two of them. In her room, Jonathan remarks that James is obviously gay. James has denied this to Rachel even though she believes his sexuality is obvious. Later in life, Rachel asks James what his plan was and why he hid his sexuality for so long. He tells her he was planning to run away and live where he did not know anyone. She thinks that he did do that eventually.

Dr. Frederick Byrne is a professor of Victorian literature and is very popular among UCC students. As an adult, Rachel thinks that this is probably because he was one of the only male professors, and he fit everyone’s idea of what a professor should look like. He loves to argue both sides of an issue in class and encourages his students to do so as well. To get into his senior seminar, students must submit an essay. Rachel does so and meets with him one-on-one to discuss the essay with him. She is nervous because she is attracted to him. He questions her about her motives for an English degree and she is unable to provide a satisfactory answer. The truth is that she did not know what else she wanted, and she was good at reading: “In the absence of any other discernible gift, it seemed like a fine thing to pursue, if only to receive more praise” (35). She leaves the office discouraged but later receives an email saying that Byrne accepted her into the seminar. She is elated.

Shortly after Rachel moves in with James, Jonathan breaks up with Rachel. Reflecting on the incident, Rachel understands how annoying she and James were. They invented an instantaneous world of inside jokes and comedy bits, and Jonathan was disturbed that she was no longer the person he knew. After the breakup, Rachel realizes that she never truly loved Jonathan. She transfers her affection to Dr. Byrne and develops a crush on him.

One day, Byrne comes into the bookstore. The two of them briefly share some banter about Hemingway and Dorothy Parker, and then Byrne asks her to check and see if his newest book, The Kensington Diet, has any pre-orders. He is sheepish about the request and Rachel finds this endearing, so she lies and says that there are 15 of them. Byrne is shocked and delighted since the book is an academic take on the Irish famine and is not expected to be popular. Rachel stays late after work making up customer profiles to fake the preorders. James teases her over her crush but stays late to help her.

Later, Ben, the store manager, asks why there are so many preorders, thinking the book is a diet book, like Atkins. James helps Rachel convince him to do an in-store book signing with Byrne. They are excited by the idea and Rachel hopes that Byrne will have a drink with her after she tells him the good news. Instead of being elated, Byrne is taken aback when Rachel suggests the signing to him. He finally agrees, but then disappoints her by giving her his wife’s email and telling her to communicate with Deenie about the signing since she is his publisher.