I’ve never been a casual friend. Ask them and they’ll tell you I am a friend of intensity. If you are wondering what a friend of intensity is, I recommend you to Caroline O’Donoghue’s The Rachel Incident where you’ll follow Rachel and James (and then another James) through a period of Great Friendship Intensity. When Rachel and James meet it isn’t immediately obvious they will be lifelong friends, but then it happens they live together and the interweaving of lives takes over.
I think the heart of this book wants to be about reproductive rights (in Ireland, or wherever, maybe), power in relationships, secrecy and sexual identity, and bodies. But while the thematic heart might want to be that – maybe to be Big and Important – I think in the end this is a book about friendship. About how friendships may form through routine and proximity, but are made lasting through crisis or vulnerability or revelation. That you can maintain a not-so-intense friendship for decades just by playing on the same trivia team, but all it takes is one night of heart opening to make the person BFF (and yes, I’m aware this is the argument Brene Brown and her adherents are forever reminding me). Of course in The Rachel Incident this theory is tested by betrayal, by distance, by loss – and continues to make the argument that when you know someone and let yourself be known, these can all be overcome.
In the end it’s not a book that really sticks with me, and I didn’t find myself much moved by any of it, but it did remind me of all my forever friends and how they came to be that through the outrageous courage of saying here I am as all of me. Or sometimes through my relentless refusal to leave them alone. Perhaps there could be a rewrite of this one where vulnerability is replaced with persistence. Either way – it’s a gentle, light and engaging read, if not entirely memorable.
Literary Vice 