RACHEL WALSH IS BACK!

Marian Keyes on the sequel she swore she’d never write

- NATALIE CAVERNELIS

WRITING a sequel can be a tricky business – especially when it involves continuing a story loved by millions. So even though fans have been begging Marian Keyes for years to write a follow-up to her 1998 bestseller Rachel’s Holiday, she was reluctant to go back.

“It was almost like I felt I couldn’t do it,” the Irish author says as she chats to us via Zoom from her home in Dún Laoghaire near Dublin.

Not only was Marian worried about disappointing fans, she also felt it was unfair to put Rachel through more heartache after all she’d been through to conquer her addictions. As someone who’s waged her own well-publicised battle with alcohol and depression, Marian felt a strong sense of responsibility for Rachel.

“With a sequel, you have to go in and change your happy ending,” she explains.

But over lockdown it dawned on Marian that her famous character wouldn’t still be the same – and this would be a good way to look at addiction years down the road.

And once she had this realisation, she was itching to get writing so she could flesh out what had happened over the past 20 years. And that, in a nutshell, is how Again, Rachel, the sequel fans have been craving, came to life.

When we catch up with Rachel, she’s back at The Cloisters rehab facility – not as a patient but rather as a counsellor. But that doesn’t mean her life isn’t without complications. Marian says her own experiences helped her to reconnect with Rachel.