Description
"A tale about sisterhood, a novel of ideas, a chronicle of our collective follies, a requiem for our agonizing species, The Alternatives unfolds in a prose full of gorgeous surprises and glows with intelligence, compassion, and beauty." --Hernan Diaz
Author: Caoilinn Hughes
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Published: 04/16/2024
Pages: 352
ISBN: 9780593545003
Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 11/01/2023 pg. 4
Kirkus Reviews 02/01/2024
Publishers Weekly 02/12/2024
Booklist 02/15/2024 pg. 20
About the Author
Caoilinn Hughes is the author of Orchid & the Wasp, which won the Collyer Bristow Prize and was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, and The Wild Laughter, which won the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award and was longlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize. She was recently the Oscar Wilde Centre Writer Fellow at Trinity College Dublin, and is now a Cullman Fellow at New York Public Library.
From the writer Anthony Doerr calls "a massive talent," the story of four brilliant Irish sisters, orphaned in childhood, who scramble to reconnect when the oldest disappears into the Irish countryside
The Flattery sisters were plunged prematurely into adulthood when their parents died in tragic circumstances. Now in their thirties--all single, all with PhDs--they are each attempting to do meaningful work in a rapidly foundering world. The four lead disparate, distanced lives, from classrooms in Connecticut to ritzy catering gigs in London's Notting Hill, until one day their oldest sister, a geologist haunted by a terrible awareness of the earth's future, abruptly vanishes from her work and home. Together for the first time in years, the Flatterys descend on the Irish countryside in search of a sister who doesn't want to be found. Sheltered in a derelict bungalow, they reach into their common past, confronting both old wounds and a desperately uncertain future. Warm, fiercely witty, and unexpectedly hopeful, The Alternatives is an unforgettable portrait of a family perched on our collective precipice, told by one of Ireland's most gifted storytellers.
Author: Caoilinn Hughes
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Published: 04/16/2024
Pages: 352
ISBN: 9780593545003
Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 11/01/2023 pg. 4
Kirkus Reviews 02/01/2024
Publishers Weekly 02/12/2024
Booklist 02/15/2024 pg. 20
About the Author
Caoilinn Hughes is the author of Orchid & the Wasp, which won the Collyer Bristow Prize and was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, and The Wild Laughter, which won the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award and was longlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize. She was recently the Oscar Wilde Centre Writer Fellow at Trinity College Dublin, and is now a Cullman Fellow at New York Public Library.