Helen Redfern's weekly look at the fictional females she loves...
I didn’t like Rachel Walsh when I first started to read Rachel’s Holiday by Marian Keyes. To be fair though, I don’t think she liked herself much either.
Rachel is the middle child of five sisters. Claire and Margaret being the eldest two, appearing in Watermelon and Angels, then the youngest two being Anna and Helen. Anna appears in Anybody Out There? Helen’s story is still to be written. Along with their Mammy and Dad they make up the Walsh family.
Living in New York with her best friend from Ireland, Brigit, Rachel likes to party. By that I mean she dabbles in recreational drugs and enjoys a drink. That’s how she sees it. Brigit and her boyfriend, Luke, see it differently, as we find out later.
It comes to a head when, one day, she overdoses.
Her family bring her back to Ireland sharpish, putting her into Cloisters (which is like the Betty Ford clinic). Rachel believes it a mistake. She thinks she is nowhere near being a drug addict - for a start she’s not thin enough - but she goes anyway, imaging saunas, a gym and famous people galore. It’s only when she has been in there some time that we find out what Rachel Walsh in New York was really like.
She wasn’t just dabbling in drugs. As Luke explains, "If it’s a drug, Rachel will have taken it." She had done cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin, valium…and the list goes on. It is shocking for the reader because at this stage Rachel has convinced us she was just an occasional user of cocaine. Even when heroin is read out and the group gasps Rachel angrily thinks to herself "I’d only smoked it". As if that made it alright.
The funny thing is, as the mess of Rachel’s life is explained and read out, her drug taking, sleeping around, putting herself into unsafe situations, her stealing, we really start to feel for her. Having been in Cloisters for a while already we are seeing glimpses of the real Rachel, not the chemically induced Rachel and she is funny, kind and sensitive.
We discover how in New York she is embarrassed to be with Luke and if one of the women she aspired to be friends with saw them together Rachel would leave. Part of you thinks "poor chap" but the other part thinks "poor Rachel". To have no self belief or self confidence and to have others validate your decisions for you.
It’s not so much Rachel I find inspiring, but her journey. With a little bit of help from others she claws her way back from a pit of self destruction towards a bright future. I can’t help but think, good on her.
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