Hey, it's Empire's Book the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. In 2018, the people of Ireland voted overwhelmingly to repeal its country's ban on abortion. Today's book isn't strictly about that, but it's not not about that, if you get what I mean. The novel's called The Rachel Incident, and it's by Caroline O'Donoghue, and it's about these two friends in Cork City growing up together as messy, lovable 20-somethings in 2009.

And in this interview with NPR's Miles Parks, O'Donohue says something really insightful about getting all these mixed messages as a woman when it came to sex.

How, on the one hand, Ireland was extremely conservative and repressive about women's sexuality.

Now, on the other hand, she was seeing what was going on in the States when it came to sex tapes

and celebrities behaving, quote unquote, badly.

And she likens it, interestingly enough, to a horror movie.

That's after the break.

In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.

Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.

On our new show, Sources and Methods.

NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people,

helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.

Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Cork City, Ireland, 2009.

Rachel was a student working in a bookshop when a guy named James comes up to her and says,

Someone here has scabies.

He said it like he was Poirot investigating a country house blighted by murder.

What? I said, the shock of the sentence,

shattering the glassy reserve that I had cultivated as part of my persona.

The persona, broadly known as girl who works in bookshop.

And what are scabies?

They're like a parasite, he said.

...