I really enjoyed this story of four Irish sisters, all highly accomplished in their fields. Each sister is living her own distinct life and has responded differently to their parents' early death. One sister then goes missing into the Irish countryside and the other three rally together to find her and rescue her if they can.

An engaging story which will appeal to a wide range of readers.

The Alternatives is very much a book of two halves; the first half, which introduces us to the four sisters - Olwen, Rhona, Maeve and Nell - I found somewhat slow going. The second half, where the younger three converge on Ireland in search of Olwen, who has disappeared, felt much more assured and I enjoyed it enormously (if one can be said to enjoy a book that deals with the collapse of civilisation as we know it). And reading the book in the week that climate scientists expressed dismay and terror about seemingly-inevitable 3c warming made Olwen's fears feel more than a bit prescient.

This just did not work for me. We start with different chapters following each sister separately - there are four of them. The issue with this, inevitably, is that you end up not being too interested in some of the characters and these chapters felt a bit like a drag.
I was not particularly interested in the story although I liked that a lot of it took place in the West of Ireland, and I disliked the writing. There is a long section - maybe a third of it - written like a play, which I was not expecting and found out of place within the context of the plot. The writing irritated me too - "Rhona's car is murderously clean and acquittingly silent", etc.
Overall, that book just was not for me and I struggled to finish it.

I think this one was more of a me issue than the book itself, as an only child I found the relatability and the relationship between the sisters a little hard to believe / comprehend. At part the writing was so solidly dialogue that I thought it would really lend itself to an audiobook / the stage where the speed would feel more natural rather than pages and pages of dialogue in a novel which feels somewhat stilted.

The characterisation of the sisters and their specialty fields was well developed and you could tell that Hughes really 'knew' her characters which I appreciated. I think this would be a good one if you have siblings and can relate a little better or even better, if you can listen on audiobook.

I really enjoyed what I was able to read of this, but sadly ran out of time to finish it before it was archived! Many thanks to NetGalley and Oneworld for this arc.

The Alternatives
By Caoilinn Hughes

I finished this book a week ago and I have been trying to come up with a review that would do justice to this superb piece of artistry, but fear of failure has paralysed me. I'm just going to crack on with it, but honestly, I am just not worthy.

Four Irish sisters, each radically intelligent in their own field, come together in mid life to avert a crisis, while trying to contain their own individual crises and keep the show on the road.

Best not to know too much going into this one, because as in life, the impetus to action and the catalyst to change is seldom what it appears on the surface.

With cracking wit and a mastery of language, Hughes sisters burst from the page as complex and fully developed characters, each of which I am fascinated with. All the side characters are amazing in their own ways and the sense of community is palpable.

The dynamics between the sisters, individuation and collectively are nuanced, hilarious and highly relatable.

Stylistically, Hughes is in a league of her own. A structure that works effortlessly to ground you in a complicated set of perspectives, a play within a novel, and what to me were thrilling insights into geology, psychology, philosophy, social and political reform and gastronomy. At times I knew she was just showing off, but I loved it.

There's no getting away from how Irish this book is, linguistically and attitude-wise. It's charm is universal but it's deep appeal is in how it tittilates at a cultural level.

Thanks to #NetGalley and #Oneworldpublications for the ARC.

The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes is a thoroughly engaging story of four sisters whose parents died in a tragic accident leaving one to effectively raise the other three.

All four sisters go on to have successful careers but are brought back together after Olwen leaves home without a trace or any kind of explanation. The reunion of the three sisters happens in Dublin as they set off to find Olwen who left her home in Galway.

The journey and all that happens afterward shows how different they have become but ostensibly how much they care for each other.

The Alternatives is incredibly realistic in depicting family behaviour in a crisis but also offers an emotional insight into the feelings of each of the sisters as they have matured.

I hugely enjoyed The Alternatives; I thought it had similar vibes to Ann Enright’s work. I will definitely look out for Hughes' other novels now.

I requested an ARC of The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes when I saw the number of prestigious writers effusively praising it and Hughes - having just finished it I can completely understand the praise. The Alternatives is about the relationship between four immensely gifted and intelligent sisters who are living very separate lives until the disappearance of one, Olwen, brings them together. Due to the cleverness of the sisters, who are all individually experts in their chosen fields, the prose pulls no punches - the reader is expected to get to grips quite quickly with their thoughts, philosophies and the intricate details of their specialties. The novel opens with Olwen teaching students about geology and I can see how some readers may choose not to persevere with it if not in the right frame of mind - I nearly didn’t it. But once immersed in their relationship when they come together, I loved it. And despite it not being the easiest of reads, I found it all very easy to visualise and can definitely imagine this adapted for screen. These sisters and their views on politics, philosophy and the environment will stay with me for some time.

I love Caolinn Hughes writing. I loved her previous two novels and The Wild Laughter is a book I recommend over and over again. The Alternatives might now replace that as my go to recommended book.

The four Flattery sisters have to grow up quickly when they lose their parents in tragic circumstances.. Now they are in their thirties living very different lives, all four are gifted, all four have PHD's , all four are living separate lives. Until Olwen, the eldest sister , disappears from her home. The sisters reunite in the Irish countryside searching for their missing sister who has no desire to be found.

I loved reading about these women. The book explores each of their characters before bringing them together and I was so invested in them. The writing is wonderful, the prose dances on the page. Hughes is such an incredible storyteller. My only complaint is I was the final section of the book had of been longer, I wanted to read more.

Another brilliant read from this author and I book I will return to. I am looking forward to buying a copy of this one. Recommend.

4.5 stars.

I found this an intelligent and perceptive exploration of sibling dynamics, but one which didn’t quite hit the mark for me. It tells the story of four sisters, all with PhDs, which is relevant for the narrative, and all of whom are experts in their respective fields. Each is searching to make sense of the world and their place in it. Orphaned at an early age, they developed a close-knit community in their youth but have latterly drifted apart. When Olwen, the eldest, a geology teacher, suddenly drops everything and disappears into a small town in Ireland, the three other sisters come together to track her down, regardless of whether she wants to be found. Once finally reunited, they talk, endlessly, about themselves, their memories and the future. So much of the novel is dialogue heavy that at one point it is written as a play, and it is as though we are watching them perform on a stage. In fact much of the book is performative, as it feels as though they are doing just that, performing for each other, rather than showing any deep family feeling or engagement. Certainly I felt nothing for them, and failed to become invested in the narrative. And as we are always looking on, rather than getting inside their heads, I felt distanced throughout and soon became indifferent to their trajectory.

Very sharp entertaining exploration of the lives of four sisters, all brought together again when one walks out on her life. The first part of the book focuses on each of the sisters, grounding the characters before they come together.

Hughes writes with insight and the novel has great characterisation, sharp wit and knowing contemporary detail.

Although quite dense at times, I enjoyed this. Really interesting presentation of sisterhood and grief with all its complexities and different dynamics. A funny and profound story that I learnt a lot from. I loved the rural Irish setting and now want to read Hughes' other work.

In short, this blew me away. Literary fiction at its most literary, it was surprising and challenging in the best of ways.

The Flattery sisters were orphaned young and have drifted apart as life carries on. When the eldest, Olwen, quits her life and disappears to live off grid, Rhona, Maeve and Nell track her down and a dysfunctional reunion of sorts ensues.

Hughes has crafted an incredibly human story with such richly drawn characters whose life experiences pave the way to an exploration of all of the big things of our times - climate change, food security, government, capitalism and connection. At its heart is a plea, or perhaps a warning, to take care of one another - in our immediate relationships with one another and on a much grander scale.

An existential and complex feat of a novel, Hughes’ intelligence is on full display here and it had my head spinning. There’s no doubt it demands a lot from its reader but ooooft the payoff is worth it. Especially that ending. 🐑

Thanks to @oneworldpublications and @netgalley for sharing a copy with me.

Caoilinn Hughes is an exhilaratingly clever writer, conjuring vivid family scenes in poetic language.

This is the prize winning poet and short story writing author’s third novel – after her devut “The Orchid and The Wasp” and her RSL Encore Award (for second novels) winning “The Wild Laughter” – novels which have combined an intelligent and opinionated examination of late capitalism with some memorable characters and some lively dialogue and original descriptions: and I enjoyed and appreciated both books even though I was not always in agreement with much of the underlying opinions or in sympathy with the characters.

And I think much of the same applies here.

The novel is set in the present day and based around “Four Irish sisters . . . all with PhDs? And none with husbands”: Olwen (the eldest and a geologist based at Galway University), Rhona (an expert on political science at Trinity in Dublin) and Maeve (a private cook and Instagram chef with a couple of published cook books) and the youngest Nell (who lectures on philosophy at a number of US universities). The sisters were orphaned when their wine-shop owner father and maths tracher mother died in a cliff incident in poor weather when Olwen was 17 (and the others 15, 13 and 12 respectively) and were bought up by Olwen when she turned 18 shortly afterwards – with Maeve acting as dinner lady, Rhona covering finances (including selling their parents house when the three eldest were at college) and Nell something of the baby of the family.

The set up of the book is distinctive – the first third or so of the book has lengthy chapters on each sister in turn (Olwen – whose chapter ends with her disappearing from her home and family), Maeve, Nell and Rhona – and their largely disparate and separate lives.

We then have for around fifty pages the latter three sisters, reunited by circumstance, travelling into the remote Irish countryside to find Olwen who is living off-grid (literally as well as figuratively – which causes an issue with Rhona’s electric car) in a basic rural property.

And then with the four sisters reunited – very much against Olwen’s will – their reunion is played out for the rest of the book, some 90 or so pages of it very distinctively via a two act play where the author’s ear for dialogue comes to its fore.

Olwen’s section is set when she takes some of her geology students (and her two young step-children) down to a beach and immediately we get the author’s by now familiar combination of theme and language. Olwen herself is preoccupied with the adverse impacts of climate change – particularly rising sea levels and their acceleration of costal erosion – and there are some great similies in metaphors, for example in one short passage (where we also get our first hint that just as Olwen moved away from her sisters when she is assured they no longer need her, may have taken the same view on her partner and step children whose first wife/mother died young) we get " the ocean silvers up to them like a platter licked clean of hors d’oeuvres" and "The bikes are now jetsam’d about the sand and shingle."

Maeve’s section takes place at a very upper class private dinner party with British sourced food that made we want to book her as a chef

Meanwhile, she also debates what to do about her publishing career: her publisher unhappy with her title let alone concept for the third of her three-book advance contract – for all her complex local cooking her new interest is in food scarcity both present due to economic circumstances and in future due to climate change and her book is due to be about food that can be made “from a pantry of food bank basics …. as well as produce that can be foraged or grown from shared community facilities”.

Maeve lives on a canal boat (part of her aim at the dinner party is to see if she can arrange a mooring on the country estate of the host) with a refugee mime-artist who we never meet but who seems to base his entire existence around mime – I must admit I was not sure if this character was meant to be humorous, metaphorical or intriguing but it did not really work for me. I also did not really like the way the dinner party was scattered with Lords and Ladies as its portrayal of Britain seemed at the Snow-in-Love-Actually level of authenticity. But overall this was an excellent section.

Nell is an intriguing character – suffering with some form of unknown condition but unable to afford to get it checked out as she lacks both tenure and health-care, but her section was I think a little hampered by a too long reproduction of a thought experiment she gives in one of her lectures (even if it does more than hint as to how she sees some of the sisterly dynamics in her family).

Rhona is easily the most sussed, successful and secure (and selfish) of the sisters – something of a global player in the study of how to enhance the domestic process with a particular expertise in citizens assemblies (where of course Ireland is one of the world leaders) and I enjoyed the details here. Again we have a slightly odd side story – here a researcher who takes her place at a lecture in South America and who later (more when the sisters unite) is subject to corporate intimidation – but I think both here and with the mime-artists, the author is ultimately a story teller, and using her short story skills to round out the story. Rhona also has a one-year old child who we are repeatedly told by everyone is adorable but whose purpose in the story (and adorability) was rather lost on me.

When the sisters get together – the individuals circumstances of their lives and the past dynamics between them are played out (quite literally given the format).

I think one’s enjoyment of this part of the novel will depend on how much from the earlier sections the reader has become invested is in the four sisters. I must admit that this is where the novel rather ran away from me – the quick flowing dialogue between them left me feeling rather like I was overhearing an entertaining pub conversation but one in which I was not really involved or invested. And as a result this was perhaps my least favourite of the author’s novels – for all I admired its ideas and language. But plenty of other readers will I think be fascinated by the sisters and their story.

The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes is an impressively well written novel. She captures the nuances and dynamics of sibling relationships and their different ways of caring for each other.

The Alternatives is my second book by Caoilinn Hughes, her third is already lined up. What a powerhouse literary talent, honestly - I’m not sure if I missed the early buzz about her work because I know I’m coming to her late but why isn’t literally everyone talking about her???

There’s a particular type of cerebral experience I love with certain books where part of the pleasure is basking in their intellect 😂 and maybe that’s not for everyone, but I just love the fizz of new ideas, of stretching my brain, of thinking about things in a new way. Hughes delivers in spades, but this is also a deeply human story.

It’s about four sisters leading very different lives, who haven’t been altogether for many years. Orphaned young, they’re forced to find their way in the world - Olwen is a geology professor, Maeve is foodie chef, Rhona is a political scientist and Nell is a philosopher teaching at several American universities.

But when Olwen walks out of her life one day and never comes back, the other three come together to find her, and face each other in both reckoning and love.

Through these four flawed, wonderful characters Hughes forces us to look at issues of the world - class, systems of government that have failed us, destruction of the planet, illness. The drama therefore plays out on many levels - at the interior level within each sister, through their relationships with each other, through their chosen professions which look outwards into society and even through the structure of the novel itself, some of which is written specifically as a two-act play.

The dramatic tension this adds is so stylish, and the ideas she grapples with are so profound that I found myself completely in its thrall. This is lit-fic with a capital L slash F, completely in my wheelhouse but sometime to consider before reading. Hughes is incredibly smart, and she writes wholly real characters, who experience anxiety and joy and fear and guilt, who make mistakes, who are selfish and selfless by turn.

I loved this book, and I loved these brilliant women - and the ending? 👀 huge thanks to netgalley for my gifted copy.

Sorry to say I didn’t get on with this one at all, DNF 1/3rd of the way through. It’s not you, it’s me etc. …okay, it’s maybe you a little bit.

We follow four sisters, after the eldest, Olwen, disappears without a trace (though having left a message to say she was okay and leaving of her own accord).

This is a novel of ideas, where all I really wanted was a novel of interesting characters and a plot to engage with. The four sisters felt largely indistinguishable for me, the same person in different circumstances. Each is a doctor in their respective field (geology, cooking, philosophy and citizen’s assemblies), and Hughes utilises the opportunity to reel of screeds of information that just entirely failed to grab me. I think this will work a lot better for a lot of other readers, but I really took against the stylistic choices made - Hughes clearly has things to say and ideas that she wants to get across, but having each character just recite these ideas at length felt like a totally uninspired way to go about this. I’ve sat through my fair share of virtue ethics lectures, and I really think there could have been a more subtle way to engage with these ideas than to make one of the central characters a lecturer, who we observe present a pretty lengthy tutorial to her students.

The prose seemed to be aiming for ‘witty’ but landed somewhere more like ‘grating’, and I can’t say I particularly liked spending time in the company of any of the central or supporting characters.

I think I just caught this novel at the wrong time, and I may well revisit it down the line and find that, with a bit of patience, I can get on board with what Hughes is going for - there are definitely no shortage of really great early reviews. For the time being though I’ll put this one aside, I’m just not sure it’s for me.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the e-ARC.

dnf @ 42%. i want to preface this by saying that i don’t think this book is bad at all, but i did struggle personally with it. the writing style was a bit too much for me at times, although i did love the way the four flattery sisters were fleshed out throughout the narrative. still, it wasn’t enough to keep me engaged, sadly.

This intelligent narrative featuring four Irish sisters challenges the conventional dysfunctional family genre, leaving readers breathless. "The Alternatives" requires a thoughtful examination and the capacity to grapple with emotionally and intellectually challenging philosophical concepts. The formidable sisters, each holding a Ph.D., demand attention.

Meet Olwen, the eldest, an earth scientist deeply concerned about the planet's inevitable demise. Following the untimely death of their parents, she assumed responsibility for her three younger sisters. Rhona, a leading scholar of deliberative democracy and the only mother among them, cares for the adorable one-year-old Leo. Maeve, a celebrity chef, is engrossed in the issue of food scarcity. Nell, an adjunct philosophy professor in the U.S., identifies as bisexual but chooses celibacy.

When Olwen mysteriously disappears, her younger sisters embark on a quest to locate her and succeed swiftly. Olwen's displeasure with the outcome is an understatement, but with four determined and passionate women concerned about global issues, what else can be expected?

Caoilinn Hughes takes a creative leap by weaving a two-act drama into her prose. This multi-page drama allows readers to experience the unfolding events as if they have a front-row seat, maintaining immersion in the story. While introducing a two-act drama is a risk, it pays off by providing an intimate understanding of the four women.

Contemplative, provocative, alternately demanding and compassionate, "The Alternatives" serves as a poignant reminder of the fallacy of control and the constraints of causation. My gratitude to Riverhead Books for granting me early access in exchange for an honest review.