by Marian Keyes

**Spoilers**

As much as I enjoyed listening to Rachel’s Holiday, a book I have previously read several times though many years ago, I’m a little bit pissed. After I had finished it, I noticed it was the Abridged Version. Gaaaahhhh! I wanted to refresh my memory of Rachel’s journey in preparation for the debut of Marian Keyes‘ new sequel to my long-time favorite of her novels, Again, Rachel. When I searched for it on my Audible account a few months ago, this one popped up and when I saw that it was almost 12 hours long, I bought it. It never crossed my mind that it could have been abridged at that length. Now that I have listened to it, and investigated further, I see that there is an unabridged version, not available until tomorrow, February 3, that is almost 15 hours long. Now that I have finished it, and looking back in the foggy mists of my memory, I do seem to remember scenes and aspects of the book, that weren’t in this audio version. It seems like Rachel had more than one relapse, or almost relapse, than the one depicted in this. It seems like there was more about Chris in the world outside of Cloisters. It seems like we get more of her background with Luke, primarily her mistreatment and hatefulness towards him. Also, in my first read of this novel, It never really hit me how serious Rachel’s problem was until I found out the job she was fired from was as a maid in a seedy hotel. And I seem to remember that we learn that one of the addicts Rachel meets in the Cloisters ends up dying of an overdose in the outside world. These may be memories in my imagination, but I am spurred to get a book version of this to see if those were real happenings in the full book or not. I may have mixed things up in my memory.

So all that said, on to the book. The narration was great, and I enjoyed my “re-read”. It was as funny, witty, painful, and shocking as I remember. As I said, I did not get the sense that anything was missing at the time except one thing. Rachel doesn’t seem to go through any withdrawal symptoms or struggle with craving drugs and alcohol in this version. Does she struggle in the full novel?

Having it told in the first person made the book very effective as we see the truth according to Rachel and the real truth at the same time. That is, once you realize that Rachel is the definition of an unreliable narrator, and nothing she says can be taken at face value. If I’d read it for the first time today, I may have realized how bad her situation was right away. But I didn’t when I first read it. I really liked Rachel. The dawning realization that Rachel was not a likable character at first was a large part of why the book had such an impact on me. Even when she is on the road to recovery she still sees things from a skewered viewpoint until well towards the end. Her continued rage against Luke’s (and Bridget’s) “betrayal” being the primary example. It is only when she lets that go and sees that their visit to The Cloisters was an act of love rather than a betrayal that we know she sees her past behavior clearly and is truly and firmly on the road to recovering.

Apparently, the sequel, due out this spring in the U.S. (and in a couple of weeks in the U.K-not fair!), finds Rachel in her late 40’s and a drug counselor at The Cloisters. It sounds like she doesn’t stay with Luke but meets him again in this one. But yet in Mammy Walsh’s A-Z of the Walsh Family, they did get married and had a little boy. Also, he is mentioned in Helen’s story, The Mystery of Mercy Close. So it will be interesting to see what happened. But whatever, she is happy and healthy. Yay!

February 2, 2022