If I hadn't picked this up at a library sale when my impulse control was at it's lowest, I wouldn't have it at all. I fell in love with Rachel, and I have no idea why.

(Aug.I waffled between five and four stars for all of ten seconds before deciding on five, simply because of my sheer inability to be rational about this novel. Clever badinage (''the only way to get over one man is get under another'') unfortunately sometimes gives way to phrases like ''pantie-meltingly gorgeous.'' The narrative is overlong, and the characters rarely speak-they yell or shriek-but, overall, Keyes's stylish wit keeps readers attentive, and her take on addiction is insightful and compassionate. Smart-ass Rachel actually becomes a beguiling heroine after learning to wake up and cook eggs at about the same time in the morning she used to fall into somebody's bed in New York. This novel isn't a how-to on overcoming addiction but an examination, often comic, of treatment that is expected to result in personality changes necessary for recovery. It could be worse, though, and there's one good-looking fellow-inmate who might, or might not, be a lifeline post-Cloisters. Quarters are spartan, clients do housework and group therapy is humiliating. Famous for a clientele of rock stars, it should be a glamorous spa, but it isn't.

As a final indignity, her father takes her back home and books her into Dublin's Betty Ford-like clinic, the Cloisters. She's also broke and unemployed, and her boyfriend has abandoned her. She can match anybody's hilarious anecdotes about a Catholic childhood, but recently her life's gone awry, and God has become ''more like a celestial stand-up comic'' than a ''benign old guy with long hair.'' When she wakes up in a hospital emergency room and finds she's been diagnosed as a suicidal drug addict, she's enraged. Rachel enjoys cocaine, alcohol and meeting men in bars, especially men wearing tight leather pants. Irish by birth but a trendy New Yorker for the past eight years, Rachel Walsh learns just what it means to have too much fun in this lively drama about addiction and recovery.

Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes