Virago seizes O’Donoghue’s ‘astonishingly good’ love story as production rights snapped up 

Virago has snapped up Caroline O’Donoghue’s latest novel, The Rachel Incident, which has also been pre-empted in the US (Knopf), Germany and the Netherlands and seized in a production deal with Universal Content Productions.

Sarah Savitt, publisher, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from Bryony Woods at Diamond Kahn & Woods Literary Agency.  It will be published as a lead fiction title in June.

The development rights were secured by UCP and Page Boy Productions in a “competitive situation”, with O’Donoghue attached to write the script.  Andrew Mills at Revolution Talent negotiated the deal on behalf of Diamond Kahn & Woods. 

US rights have sold to Jenny Jackson at Knopf in a six-figure pre-empt and pre-empts have also been accepted in Germany and the Netherlands, with rights in other territories under offer.

The Rachel Incident is described as “an all-consuming love story, but it’s not the one you’re expecting". The synopsis continues: “It’s unconventional and messy. It’s young and foolish. It’s about losing and finding yourself. But it is always about love. When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr Byrne, her best friend James helps her devise a plan to seduce him. But what begins as a harmless crush soon pushes their friendship to its limits. Over the course of a year they will find their lives ever more entwined with the Byrnes’ and be faced with impossible choices and a lie that can’t be taken back.”

Savitt and Clare Gordon, who has also been working on the book at Virago, said in a joint statement: “There’s something magical about those years between adolescence and adulthood which Caroline O’Donoghue captures just perfectly in The Rachel Incident: the first time living away from home, the oh-so-formative friendships, the uncontainable emotions, discovering the sheer joy of sex, the decisions that feel like they’ll change our entire future.

“With Knopf, Universal and Page Boy Productions joining the team for The Rachel Incident, we can’t wait to reach a whole new readership for Caroline. She’s a star on the Virago fiction list and we are thrilled to be publishing what we believe will be a break-out book for her.”

Jackson added: “This kind of book comes along once in a very long while.”

“Like Maggie O’Farrell, Katherine Heiny or Sally Rooney, Caroline writes with the wryness, the wit, the warmth, the page-turning momentum that comes only from emotional stakes and love of characters. She is a natural born novelist and The Rachel Incident  is astonishingly good, full of laugh-out-loud dialogue and a plot that had me gasping with surprise and wicked delight,” she said.

O’Donoghue, whose previous novels Promising Young Women and Scenes of a Graphic Nature, were also published by Virago, said: "The Rachel Incident is a book I wrote in the grip of late-stage pandemic blues and I had just one goal in mind when I began: to make myself smile again. I wanted a book that would make me feel buoyant, hopeful and forgiving during a time where it was easy to feel bleak and enraged.

“It’s a book about youth and young adulthood and the moments in life when we truly feel like everything is just beginning.  When your friends are your greatest muses, you’re finally starting to have good sex, and you’ve broken completely with the person you were at school. It’s about forging a new identity, new loyalties, and new ethical standards for yourself. It’s also about working in retail, having a crush on everyone you meet, and not knowing how to do your laundry."