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Books to Get You Through Your 20s: An Exclusive Guest Post from Caroline O’Donoghue, Author of The Rachel Incident
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Caroline O’Donoghue’s debut adult novel is an outstanding coming-of-age story that is perfect for fans of Trespasses by Louise Kennedy or any of Sally Rooney’s books. Driven by Rachel’s friendship with James, this story traverses their relationship as a financial crash looms and Rachel falls for her married professor… and she’s not the only one. A triumphant tale of unrequited love, messy friendships, and early adulthood, The Rachel Incident is a must-read. Keep reading for a guest post from Caroline O’Donoghue about what books helped her get through her 20s.
We are currently in the golden age of millennial writers. By “golden age”, I mean that millennial people are finally old enough to look back on their own youth with something approaching perspective, and I am one of them. You can pick up a novel by any millennial and receive a detailed review on the 2008 financial crash, chat rooms, the vagaries of Girl Boss feminism, the highs and lows of post-porn masculinity, growing up in the wake of 9/11, etcetera, etcetera. We’re on it. We’re on the case.
But if you’re actually experiencing your 20s right now? If you need something to get you “through”? Then we’re not your most reliable witnesses. Millennial women are ageing into mothers, wives, partners, professionals and business owners. We are heaving under the weight of mortgages, ailing parents and demanding in-laws. Therefore, we’re more inclined to be cynical about our youth, and youth generally. We need something that will reassure us that this — sleep-training our dogs, spending $60 on eye cream, googling Ozempic at 3am — is better than that. ‘That’ means unreliable men, terrible apartments and borderline abusive work scenarios.
In my experience, the best way to get through your 20s is to read authors whose own 20s was long enough ago that they’ve allowed a glimmer of nostalgia to peek through. The ones who realise that you really will never be so wide-eyed and open again. Your hangovers, at this stage, are funny. Your digestive issues are non-threatening. You can fall asleep in your make-up. You can get away with wearing a waistcoat with just a bra underneath. Read these books to remind yourself that you can be young and dumb and free of consequences, then go out and kiss someone whose last name you will never learn.
These are the books that helped me limp through. I hope they help you, too.
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Circle of Friends is a 600-page epic that is mostly just college-aged women chatting, and where the central crisis is that our main character, Benny, has to commute into college from the country every day rather than live in Dublin. I love it. I love that Binchy had so much fun with her characters, how shatteringly real their hopes and victories are, how the drama is high but never feels overcooked or maudlin. It made me want to be 20 again, and few things make me want to do that.
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When I first read Le Divorce, I wrote “sex is supposed to be fun” on the back cover. I had forgotten, somehow. The sex I wrote about was always either violent or strange or teeming with feminist undertones. I had forgotten that people primarily have sex to have fun. Which is not to say that Le Divorce is a book about sex, but it is a book about being horny, being young, being abroad for the first time and being stupid. It’s a book about how it’s ok to be horny and stupid sometimes, no matter who tries to make you feel bad about it.
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I come back to Brother of the More Famous Jack constantly, to the point where I think it’s referenced twice in my latest novel. It focuses on Catherine, a woman in her thirties looking back on her very early twenties, and the family she fell in love with as an undergrad. I tried hard to echo Catherine’s affection for herself as a younger person. She’s forever looking back with a shrug and thinking: I was gorgeous, and a disaster, sue me. I think that’s how all 20-something women should live their lives: I am gorgeous, and a disaster. Sue me.
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Viv Albertine’s memoir about living through the London punk movement is one of the warmest, funniest books out there. Reading it always reminds me to live outside my comfort zone, and to lower my hygiene standards if it means having a good time, or even a good story. At one point, she describes giving a blowjob to Johnny Rotten and saying he smelled faintly of piss. “But then again, we all did,” she adds. “It was a familiar smell to me. Homey.”
Sex and The Single Girl: Before There Was Sex in the City, There Was
Helen Gurley Brown
Paperback
$22.95
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There’s nothing more comforting to me than a woman from the recent past who has a lot of opinions. That’s the miracle the late Helen Gurley Brown: her plethora of absolutely nuts opinions, spouted as facts, and with supreme confidence. One of her tips for meeting men? Bring a towel to the park and lie on it. “One girl alone on a beach towel is a man attractor.” As silly and dated as the book is in places, it’s very clear that Gurley Brown has just one goal in mind: to destigmatize single women in 1960s society, and to make sure women are having as much fun as they possibly can.