Bond Wildly and Love Deeply: A Conversation with Caroline O’Donoghue
‘‘I wanted to summon the joy of that co-dependent, lovely, drunk, dreamy time.’
Image Credit: Jamie Drew
For people who haven’t read the book yet, could you give a general overview of what The Rachel Incident is about, and how it came about from your perspective as a writer?
Sure, this is my first interview I’ve given about the book, so I’m interested to see whether even I know what the book is about! The Rachel Incident tells the story of Rachel who’s living in Cork in 2009 during the global financial crash, which has started really trickling down and affecting her life. Her formerly very middle-class parents are really struggling financially but also, the city she grew up in is kind of buckling in on itself. And then she suddenly meets James, who is closeted and working in the bookshop that she works in, and he just wakes her up. She immediately moves out of her parents’ house and moves in with him in a shitty little cottage. And what I love about it is that it’s about a renaissance of the soul. We’re very used to this idea of people going to the big city to find themselves, but you can do that a mile and a half away from your childhood home if you meet the right person! There’s this social scene of two, and then they just disappear into a world of private jokes. Among their private jokes is the idea that Rachel is going to seduce her impressive professor Dr Byrne, so they organise a book launch for him on his unreadable book.
Having worked in a bookshop, I could imagine that scene so well – the awkwardness of it all was so well done.
It was my favourite part to write; it was so fun. And it felt like writing a real farce, like a bedroom comedy kind of thing, which is pretty fun to do. Anyway, instead of seducing Rachel, he seduces James, which sounds like a big betrayal that will move the novel on, but it actually ends up not really being a betrayal, but more of a gathering of mess.
In terms of how it came about, it was during the pandemic; it was written when the pandemic wasn’t fun anymore. I had a book due for May, but then when it came to February, I had to finally face up to what I’d been feeling for over a year, which was that the book just wasn’t good. It just wasn’t, it wasn’t a goer. It was this kind of Black Mirror-esque story about a feminist workplace, and I had a lot to say because I worked in big feminism for a few years and I had a lot of observations on that movement, but then the further we got into the pandemic, the more I was a bit like, ‘Who cares?’
You got a little bit of perspective from the pandemic?
Totally. And also, the novel, I think there are good bits of it, but I will never look at it again. Even though it was the kind of a novel I thought that maybe I should be writing because I enjoy novels like it, it was that kind of novel that is just ‘girls having mean thoughts’, and everyone’s a little bit nasty. There’s definitely a genre of book like that, but I just realised that it was making me depressed writing it. So, I had 12 weeks to write something else, and my major thing was that it had to be something where I didn’t have any excuses to open a Google Chrome tab because, with the other book, I had lost so much belief in myself that I had fallen into a rabbit hole – I was going crazy interviewing people that had no relevancy. Like, I went to a five-hour dinner with a Lebanese priest just because one of the characters is Lebanese! So, I couldn’t do that again. And I wanted to write about something that made me happy, so I ended up going back to this time in my life in 2008 when I lived with my best mate, Ryan, who was in the closet at the time, and I wanted to summon the joy of that co-dependent, lovely, drunk, dreamy time. And then the rest was just kind of a soap opera that I cobbled together. The emotions are very true, but the story is definitely fake.
We’ve talked to a few authors about how readers always want to assume that everything’s biographical, which in your case it isn’t, but there’s also a realisation that certain things can’t help but be pulled from your experience, even if it’s just an experience of a certain emotion.
I don’t know what what’s wrong with the human brain, but we’ve still not managed to grant our novelists that duality. Truth in novels is a bit like alcohol in wine – 13% is too low, 15% is about right, 16% and people lose their mind. What is odd about The Rachel Incident is that the images on both the UK and the US jacket covers look very like me…
I was going to ask you about that! It really does look like you…
It’s very strange. And when you’re talking about covers, you get a couple of vetoes at the beginning and I used all my vetoes quite quickly, and I kept pointing the publishers towards the Young Mungo cover – I really wanted that sweat; I wanted it to feel intimate and close. And when they showed me the cover, I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is fabulous, it’s exactly what I wanted. Yes, yes, yes.’ And then I showed it to my boyfriend, and he was like, ‘That looks like a picture of you – is that why you like it?’
It’s a great picture! People should read The Rachel Incident because it’s a great book, but I think the fact that people will think it’s you on the cover might make them want to read it even more.
I think if they think that they’re being invited to uncover secrets, that can only be good for business!
Great point. I wanted to ask you about writing about Ireland while living in London – does the distance give you a certain perspective of Ireland that you might not have had if you were writing from Ireland?
It’s an interesting thing because, when I first started out, I had this book out called Promising Young Women, and the main character is a Londoner, and nobody in that book is Irish. At that point, I would have been living in London for six years, so that was what I was experiencing and what I wanted to write about. I also didn’t feel like anyone would be interested in what I have to say about Ireland, which is a funny feeling. I felt like I had been gone too long to have any relevant take on what the country was up to, but I also hadn’t been in England long enough to feel truly centred, to really get the kind of references you’re sharing with friends. I think it gave a sense of listlessness to that early book.
And then in the next one, I wanted to answer that, so it was about an English person going back to their Irish roots to peel back the threads of their identity. And then the YA books are all set in Ireland because I was a teenager in Ireland, and they were the only kind of teenager I knew. And that really opened up this flow for me where I realised, and maybe it’s just to do with confidence, that what I have to say about Ireland is every bit as relevant as what James Joyce had to say about Ireland, because we’re both reading about the Ireland that we knew about. And I think, as an Irish writer, it takes you a long time to get over not being James Joyce, or any of the other amazing ones. And so, for some reason, I was very able to plant my feet in it this time.
I think that’s why a lot of people have their debuts in these big cities, because a lot of writers do move to cities to try and become themselves. And the feeling that writers really thrive on is feeling like an outsider –Who am I? Where am I? Who am I to you?
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Read the full interview with Caroline in the Light Issue.
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