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Overview
The fast lane is much too slow for Rachel Walsh. And Manhattan is the perfect place for a young Irish female to overdo everything. But Rachel's love of a good time is about to land her in the emergency room. It will also cost her a job and the boyfriend she adores.
When her loving family hustles her back home and checks her into Ireland's answer to the Betty Ford Clinic, Rachel is hopeful. Perhaps it will be lovely—spa treatments, celebrities, that kind of thing. Instead, she finds a lot of group therapy, which leads her, against her will, to some important self-knowledge. She will also find something that all women like herself fear: a man who might actually be good for her.
Synopsis
Twenty-seven and the miserable owner of size eight feet, Rachel Walsh enjoys two naughty habits: a lover who likes his leather pants tight, and a fondness for recreational drugs. But as Rachel learns, what goes up must come down. First she loses her job, then her lover, and then finds herself being marched off to the Cloisters, Dublin's answer to the Betty Ford Clinic. Outraged—surely she's not thin enough to be an addict!—it suddenly dawns on Rachel that it's about time she had a vacation, and where better than a place crammed with jacuzzis, gyms, and rock stars going tepid turkey? What she gets instead, however, are middle-aged men in sweaters and enough group therapy to drive her to distraction, until she meets Chris. A man with a past, will he be her salvation—or more trouble than Rachel's ever known? Engaging and wickedly funny, Rachel's Holiday is a powerful story of love and discovery.
About the Author:
Marian Keyes is the author of Watermelon and Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married. She lives in Dublin, Ireland.
USA Today - Denise Kersten
In Rachel's Holiday Keyes deftly navigates the psychological disaster zone of a drug problem beginning with the first sate: denial. She constructs the mind-set of an addict: Rachel's desperate excuses and explanations reach absurd levels.
After Rachel ODs and her abstention fascist roommates called her family in Ireland, she ends up back home in a treatment center. There she watches as Josephine, her bad-cop counselor, breaks through the walls of denial with the "brown sweater" (tea drinking middle-aged men with a penchant for cardigans who fill the center) and the other addicts.
All of this sounds terribly depressing. But Keyes handles it with a light touch, injecting humor at every turn. Rachel is an endearing character, and her progress, however slow, is genuinely satisfying. It's clear from the depth of character profiles and group therapy scenes that Keyes, who is married to a psychiatrist, did her homework. That's what makes the novel so compelling.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
Rachel's Holiday, by bestselling British author Marian Keyes (author of Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married and Watermelon), is a poignant, madcap story of life in the fast lane. Rachel Walsh (the wild younger sister of the heroine of Watermelon) is living in New York, working hard and playing harder. For Rachel, every night is a party, until she makes what she calls a stupid little mistake. If her overindulgence had only involved a little too much to drink and an attempt to write poetry, no one would have been alarmed. But the addition of a few sleeping pills adds up to what the hospital calls an overdose. Rachel's New York friends call it just plain stupid, and her loving family calls it a disaster. After the ER docs pump her stomach and her boyfriend dumps her, the Walsh clan hustles their wild child onto the first plane back to Ireland, where they've booked her into the Cloisters, a drug treatment center. Rachel would be the first to agree she needs a holiday, but she finds the Cloisters is no celebrity spa. In fact, it's definitely no holiday for Rachel to face hard facts, battle her demons, and get her life back on track. Rachel's Holiday is tough, tender and funny all at once, with a wild, wonderful love story to sweeten the mix.Denise Kersten
In Rachel's Holiday Keyes deftly navigates the psychological disaster zone of a drug problem beginning with the first sate: denial. She constructs the mind-set of an addict: Rachel's desperate excuses and explanations reach absurd levels.After Rachel ODs and her abstention fascist roommates called her family in Ireland, she ends up back home in a treatment center. There she watches as Josephine, her bad-cop counselor, breaks through the walls of denial with the "brown sweater" (tea drinking middle-aged men with a penchant for cardigans who fill the center) and the other addicts.
All of this sounds terribly depressing. But Keyes handles it with a light touch, injecting humor at every turn. Rachel is an endearing character, and her progress, however slow, is genuinely satisfying. It's clear from the depth of character profiles and group therapy scenes that Keyes, who is married to a psychiatrist, did her homework. That's what makes the novel so compelling.
— USA Today