Novels that explore the complexities and paradoxes of sisterhood with real authenticity are rare.
In The Alternatives, Caoilinn Hughes, one of Ireland’s most innovative and eminent young writers, has shown us how it’s done. With a style both provocative and innovative, she’s written a book that explores the effects of the tottering neoliberal structure in Ireland through the perspectives of four sisters who, each in their own way, are seeking answers to questions that are unresolvable not just in Ireland but on a global scale.
Olwen, Maeve, Rhoda and Nell, orphaned as children, are all unmarried, brilliant and highly qualified in their disparate fields. Now in their 30s and living as widely apart as Connecticut and Notting Hill, they’re unexpectedly reunited when Olwen, a geologist overwhelmed by forebodings of doom for the planet and her own place in it, suddenly goes missing.
When she’s discovered living off grid in a primitive, isolated farmhouse in County Leitrim, in despair and drinking heavily, the four reconvene. Irreconcilable differences compounded by memories of their childhood loss continue to haunt them despite their tentative attempts to appease the tensions between them.
A problem for me though was the practice, which many writers adopt, of omitting quotation marks to indicate dialogue, presumably confident that their prose will make it clear enough who’s speaking. Often in this book it doesn’t. Parts of the book are written in the form of a screenplay, where the character speaking is made obvious, however, alternating traditional narrative with screenplay doesn’t seem to have a purpose and is distracting.
Having said that, this is a thought-provoking book, impassioned in its unblinkered confrontation with what ails humanity on a large and small scale.
Reviewed by Anne Green
Released April 2024
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Caoilinn Hughes is the author of The Wild Laughter, which won the Royal Society of Literature’s Encore Award, was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, and was a finalist for three other awards. Her first novel, Orchid and the Wasp won the Collyer Bristow Prize, was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, and was a finalist for four other awards. Her short fiction won the Irish Book Awards’ Story of the Year, The Moth Short Story Prize, and an O.Henry Prize. She has been Oscar Wilde Writer Fellow at Trinity College Dublin and is a Cullman Center Fellow at New York Public Library.
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