The Rachel Incident

Cork City, 2009, at the depths of Ireland's recession: Rachel, a bookshop clerk finishing her degree, falls into an intense, codependent friendship with her charismatic roommate, James. When Rachel develops a crush on her married Victorian-literature professor, Fred Byrne, James's meddling sets off a tangle of secrets, affairs, and quiet betrayals that binds the two friends to Fred and his glamorous, well-connected wife—and reshapes all their lives. A warm, sharp, funny novel about first love and the friendships that outlast it.