The Alternatives

(Hardback)

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Description

The four Flattery sisters - Olwen, Nell, Maeve and Rhona - were left to cobble together their own makeshift adolescence after the death of both their parents. Decades later, all four of them have found success in their respective fields, all of them boasting PhDs and, in Nell's case, a healthy clutch of Instagram followers. Still, none of the sisters have come to terms with their parents' deaths, choosing to focus instead on bigger problems - food insecurity, climate change, post-Brexit capitalism - to avoid confronting this trauma. When Olwen disappears, Nell, Maeve and Rhona attempt to find the sister they no longer know, a woman who wants desperately not to be found. Their search will force the siblings to bridge the isolation that has grown between them, and face the past they thought they could bury. Full of laugh-out loud wit and clear-eyed observations,The Alternatives is a story of sisterhood and belonging, of loss and connection, written with Caoilinn Hughes' trademark intelligence and razor-sharp prose.

Reviews

'Caoilinn Hughes is one of the most intelligent, surprising, and delightful writers around.The Alternativesmade me laugh, cry, and think.'

-- Louise Kennedy, author of Trespasses

'I wish I knew how Caoilinn Hugheshas managed to write a book of such depth and gravity that is also so gripping and relentlessly funny.'

-- Hernan Diaz, author of Trust
'Caoilinn Hughes's beautiful new novel uses a fairy tale premise - four sisters, orphaned in their youth, each brilliant in her own way - to explore some of the most pressing issues of our time: the environment, politics, and how to live in the world.The Alternativesis both a book of ideas and a gripping read, formally audacious yet deeply humane. Superb.' -- Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind

'The Alternativesis fizzy, brainy, and brilliant, always at the service of a drama of great emotional power. Caoilinn Hughes is an extraordinarily gifted writer.'

-- Joseph ONeill, author of Netherland

'Hughes's elegiac romp into our collective crises erupts in gorgeous language and sizzles with wit, yet is undergirded by pathos. A shapeshifter of a writer, she can draw any character, any foible with crystalline precision.' Diane Cook, author of The New Wilderness

PRAISE FOR THE WILD LAUGHTER by Caoilinn Hughes:

'Powerful...darkly adventurous... An Irish Cain and Abel.' Guardian

'I loved this book. So funny and bleak. I loved the madness, the tone, the ending, the realisation, The Third Policeman charge of the whole thing.' Roddy Doyle, author of The Commitments

Author Bio

Caoilinn Hughesis an Irish writer and poet whosesecond novel,The Wild Laughter(2020)won the Encore Award 2021, was longlisted for the 2021 Swansea University International Dylan Thomas Prize, and was shortlisted for several awards including the Dalkey Emerging Writer Literary Award. Her first novel,Orchid & the Wasp(2018), won the Collyer Bristow Prize 2019 and shortlisted for the Hearst Big Book Awards and the Butler Literary Award. She holds a PhD from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and is currently the Oscar Wilde Centre Writer Fellow at Trinity College Dublin.