The irony of community.
The novel is largely about loneliness and a longing for meaningful relationships. This is what inspires her affair, and it's what inspires her to become vulnerable, but what she finds in relationships is the strength to grow into a stronger person alone, not with others. This paradox of loneliness is the unspoken center of the narrative.
The irony of romance.
Love is not depicted in this story as the answer to a female problem. Instead, it's just another layer of complexity for Rachel to sort out. This is not a rom-com, but rather the story of the complexity of life and the lonely pursuit of identity, so the fact that an affair is at the center of the plot is ironic.
The irony of aging.
For Cameron, aging represents power and transformation, but for her mother, it means the slow approach of death. This dual presentation of time as growth and decay is paradoxical and ironic, but it's part of what makes this novel an award-winning book.
The irony of parental figures.
As a child, parents represent authority. We are told to obey. But as an adult, a parent (at least for Rachel), can represent the opposite. For Rachel, her mother is not an unbiased prophet with truths and standards, but rather a human. Just a normal human, and Rachel realizes that to transcend her social frustrations, she will need to recognize the true limitations of her loved ones to make things right. Rachel learns to take responsibility, moving on from the authority of her mother. This ironic abandonment of that type of authority is common in mythology as an indication of a 'coming-of-age.'
The irony of identity as an ostracized person.
Part of what Rachel learns from her relationships is that she really will have to grow as a person and start making her own path and her own meaning in life, instead of looking to others. As a person for whom loneliness is a primary challenge in life, Rachel must have recognized the irony of that knowledge, because it goes against the urges of loneliness to run to someone else to meet your needs.
