Passion Project

- By Matilda Daniel

August is for Reviewing

For this article of the Passion Project, instead of potentially boring you with what I learned this month of 2025 (which is not a lot other than the wine served at the Normanby is probably some of the best and strongest wine I've ever tasted), I will write something I know everyone loves to read...

A twenty-year-old girl's opinion.

Sit back with a cup of tea, and prepare to be inspired to consume two new novels, if you haven't already.

Listen, I don't know what they're feeding these Irish writers, but there's something in their novels that not only grips me as a reader, but traps me into the world of Irish politics, and I'm not complaining. Whenever I hear about a new contemporary fiction novel by a female author from Ireland or the UK, I instinctively reach for my NAB card and head straight to the nearest bookstore — or, more recently, the local library (we love an environmentally conscious girl).

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue is a novel that explores the complexities of a flawed, unconventional young woman. Spanning 28 chapters, it follows Rachel as she looks back on her life from the vantage point of 2022, recounting the turbulent, formative years of her final time at university during 2009–2010.

Rachel and her best friend James, who both work at a local bookstore, bond over Rachel's infatuation with her much older, married, English Literature professor. Due to Ireland's economic downturn and the need for an international bailout, Rachel and James move in together. This prompts Rachel to lose her identity and, coincidentally, morph into James, as the friendship becomes all-encompassing.

 Like many twenty-year-olds figuring out who they are and learning to survive away from their families, these characters are messy, selfish, poorly communicative, and additionally, completely lovable. Tackling historic, political unrest in Ireland, queer love, and insecurities that all young adults face, the novel tastefully describes deep platonic love.

Strengths of this book include the visualisation of Ireland in the early 2000s, regarding class and social decay. The conversations that drove the plot read raw, humorous, and completely realistic, given the circumstances. I didn't realise how invested I was until I turned the last page and realised the characters had finally left me. I laughed, I cried, and I fell in love with the complex and problematic character of Rachel.

As she morphs into a copy and paste of James, she loses a boyfriend, gains courage, and gives us some iconic quotes: “But James did steal me from Jonathan [her boyfriend]. Over the course of just a month, I would be colonised by James on a molecular level, and my personality would mould around his wherever there was space to do so. The official line is that Jonathan dumped me. The truth is that I left him for another man.”

An unexpected twist regarding queer love remains in my mind alongside one of the best scenes I have read in a long time, which involves a dinner party, a secret, and a table setting with not enough chairs for the number of guests invited. This simple concept still haunts me as a reader.

Rachel was so easy to visualise, I felt as if I'd met her personally. James, despite his many faults, provided the humour that kept the pages turning. When Rachel confronted the character, Deenie Harrington,  about a lie she had been unwillingly swept up in, O'Donoghue cooked (for lack of a better phrase);

'“When I first met you,” she [Deenie] said, “with that stupid carry-on about how the shop wanted to put on the launch for his awful book. I knew something was off. It didn’t make any sense. And then when I actually saw you…” She allowed herself a dry cackle. “I thought, Oh God, how silly, she’s just a chubby student with a crush.” Of all the things Deenie Harrington said that night, this is the line that I have come back to the most. On my worst days, on my bad dates, on the job interviews that didn’t quite work out the way they should. Just a chubby student with a crush. "'

This simple insult was written casually and authentically, and yet I was shocked it was the quote I remembered the most from this book. We've all heard and perhaps said flippant comments that we assume won't have a lasting impact, but for many of us, they do. Whether these comments were from a colleague casually passing by your desk, or a friend-of-a-friend meeting you for the first time, or a joke from a sister they didn't think was serious, these comments can stick with us. They bubble under the surface, ready and eager to remind us what people have said when we're having a bad day. This authenticity and sometimes uncomfortable realism of such scenes and conversations is the reason this book gained popularity and why it will stay with me for quite some time.

If I had to persuade you to read this novel based on one quote, let it be this:

“I have read a lot of books about the lasting trauma of young women and their dastardly, corrupt English professors and what happens when they fuck you. I have read nothing whatsoever on the trauma of when your English professor decides not to fuck you.”

Very similar to The Rachel Incident, Blue Sisters by CoCo Mellors is about being young, broke, and messy, with the addition of grief and sisterhood.

In the same way, every sister I have ever met has described this specific relationship, much like having a built-in best friend in addition to a built-in enemy, Blue Sisters captures the feeling of knowing you will always be a part of something. Throughout fourteen chapters, readers are privy to the feeling of always being cushioned by sisters who grew up alongside them. It describes the feeling that's so specific, I thought it was impossible to articulate, until I read this book.

With three sisters, Avery, 33, Bonnie, 28, and Lucky, 26, experiencing different lives and worldly experiences, each must grapple with the grief of the death of their fourth sister, Nikki, 27.

This book explores the challenge of adjusting to a new dynamic — being one of three instead of the natural comfort of four. Additionally, it confronts the reality that grief cannot be compared, as each sister’s loss is shaped by the unique relationship she shared with the others.

These two books have the same intricate talent of describing complex women who try at everything. They try at careers, they try being sisters, and they try being liked.

With the first sentence of the prologue stating, "A sister is not a friend. Who can explain the urge to take a relationship as primal and complex as a sibling and reduce it to something as replaceable, as banal as a friend? True sisterhood, the kind where you grew fingernails in the same womb, is not the same as friendship. You don't choose each other. There is no period of getting to know the other. You’re part of each other, right from the start.”

The tone is set right from the beginning and continues throughout. Mellors provided equal space and time for each sister throughout the novel, allowing the reader to feel a unique connection to every story and timeline. With Avery, living in England, practising law and living with her girlfriend, Bonnie, a bouncer, and training in Santa Monica, and Lucky trying her best to maintain her modelling career in Paris, each chapter threw you into a different world and personal struggle.

Like authentic siblings, I loved each character for a completely different reason. Each with their own strengths and each with their own flaws.

A conversation when the three sisters reunited to look over Nikki's things is a beautiful example of the raw conversations scattered throughout.

The Blue Sisters

'"It's nothing," she [Lucky] said eventually. "I've just been jet-lagged. Let me take a shower and then we'll look at Nicky's shit."

"Nice," said Avery. "Very respectful."

Lucky was already heading out of the room.

"She was our sister, not a saint," she said over her shoulder. "Her shit is still her shit, Avery."'

I read this book in two days. Like The Rachel Incident, these sisters will stay with me for a long time. After finishing the final chapter, I picked up the phone and called

my sisters. Yes, one of the calls ended in an argument — though we quickly forgot what

the other was mad about. Still, I called them and they answered.

I'm sure it's clear from this newsletter that I don't subscribe to the notion that we cannot deepen pop culture or light, beach reads. We should deepen everything, especially novels written by female authors. The Rachel Incident and Blue Sisters are important; they're must-reads, not just for sisters, but for women.

I rate each novel a 5/5.