Introduction

Rachel Klein is sacked from her job at the White House after she sends an email criticizing Donald Trump. As she is escorted off the premises she is hit by a speeding car, driven by what the press will discreetly call "a personal friend of the President." Does that explain the flowers, the get-well wishes at a press briefing, the hush money offered by a lawyer at her hospital bedside? Rachel’s recovery is soothed by comically doting parents, matchmaking room-mates, a new job as aide to a journalist whose books aim to defame the President, and unexpected love at the local wine store. But secrets leak, and Rachel’s new-found happiness has to make room for more than a little chaos. Will she bring down the President? Or will he manage to do that all by himself?

Rachel to the Rescue is a mischievous political satire, with a delightful cast of characters, from one of America’s funniest novelists.

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Excerpt

1
T H E B A D N E W S F I R S T
Unless I amend it, my resume confirms that I truly did work for the forty-fifth president of the United States, if you can call my daily torture-task a job. Even when I hide behind my formal title (Assistant, White House Office of Records Management aka WHORM) I eventually confess that I spent my days taping back together every piece of paper that passed through the hands of Donald J. Trump. ... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

1) Think about the title of the novel. Whom do you think Rachel might be said to be “rescuing”? Does your answer change from the beginning of the book to the end of the book?

2) In the opening pages, Rachel is fired from her unusual (but real!) job at the White House because of a drunken rant and a “reply-all” email. Have you ever done anything similar? What is the worst or most cringeworthy workplace mistake you have made?

3) Discuss the relationship between Rachel and her parents and the ways it changes, and doesn’t change, over the course of the novel. For instance, when Rachel reluctantly returns to her parents’ apartment after the accident, she is resistant to accepting her status as a “boomeranging adult child” (p. 40) Both she and her parents find themselves grappling with very different expectations: to her it is “depressing in ways I didn’t know how to articulate” (p. 32) to discover that her parents have moved on and that all of her childhood belongings are gone or in storage. Does this ring true for you in other parent-child relationships you know? Is there a right or wrong way to grapple with these conflicting expectations?

4) Another interesting parent-child relationship in the novel is between Murray and his son Dougie. Dougie and his brother seem quite upset about Murray’s romance with Mary-Jo and the secrecy that surrounds it. Why do you think everyone is making the choices they do? Which side do you agree with and why?

5) A key plot point in the novel revolves around Donald Trump’s fear of being discovered with an optometrist—of anyone even knowing that, as a seventy-three-year-old man, he uses glasses. Why do you think this is? Do you find this to be a reasonable defense of his personal privacy, or an irrational point of vanity, or something in between? Do you have any physical or behavioral traits that you might want to hide from the world if you were POTUS?

6) In her first meeting with Kirby Champion, Rachel leans into the idea that it is a “crackpot job interview” (p. 67). What red flags are visible early on? Ultimately, do you think Kirby is a good employer? Why or why not? Do you think Rachel should have taken the job? Would you have? What is the strangest job interview you’ve ever had?

7) Why do you think Elizabeth’s attitude toward Rachel changes so much when Yasemin moves in? How does this help Elizabeth come out of her shell? Why are Elizabeth and Yasemin so determined to play matchmakers for Rachel?

8) Both Mandy and Simon seem very determined to get Rachel to leak the news of Veronica’s affair with POTUS. Out of all the people in the administration who could talk to the press about the scoop, why do they choose Rachel?

9) What do you make of Sandra? Do you sympathize with her in the end? Why or why not?

10) In Rachel to the Rescue, Lipman imagines a world where Melania leaves Donald after discovering that “Herman Trump” and Veronica are meeting in the West Wing, a step too far for Melania. Do you think that something like this might have been the final straw in real life? If not, what do you think might have been? Do you feel Melania comes off positively in Rachel to the Rescue?

11) Who is your favorite character in the book and why?

12) As we can expect in any Elinor Lipman novel, there are many twists and turns before we reach the happy ending. What surprised you the most?

13) Lipman has been praised as a writer who can “pierce the heart as well as the funny bone” (New York Daily News). Can you name specific scenes that do both?

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