The Alternatives
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- £9.99
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
Olwen. Nell. Maeve. Rhona. Meet the Flattery sisters.
Four gifted Irish sisters confront an uncertain future in this dazzling novel from a major literary talent. Perfect for fans of Jonathan Franzen, Maggie O'Farrell and Claire Vaye Watkins.
'Surprising and delightful... The Alternatives made me laugh, cry, and think.' Louise Kennedy, author of Trespasses
Olwen, Nell, Maeve and Rhona were plunged prematurely into adulthood when their parents died in tragic circumstances. Now in their thirties, they have each carved out impressive careers – living distant lives, fighting separate battles. But Olwen's disappearance is about to change everything.
A geologist haunted by the weight of the earth's past and a crushing awareness of its volatile future, Olwen abruptly vanishes from her home without a trace. Her sisters track her down to a remote bungalow in rural Ireland, with little electricity and patchy connection to the outside world. Together for the first time in years, the sisters vie to confront old wounds and diagnose new ills – most urgently, Olwen's.
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.
A New Statesman 'Book to Look Forward to in 2024'
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A 39-year-old geology professor disappears from her Galway campus, prompting her three sisters to reunite and track her down, in the intelligent if uneven latest from Hughes (The Wild Laughter). When Olwen Flattery was 18, her parents died in an accidental fall from a cliff, and she became legal guardian of her three younger sisters: Maeve, a celebrity chef in London whose recipes Hughes presents as simultaneously silly and delectable (a "fancy fish taco" comprises "red mullet with anchovy-rosemary sauce on a cabbage leaf"); Nell, an adjunct philosophy professor at a Connecticut college; and Rhona, a hard-headed Dublin political scientist. At times, Hughes reaches for dark comedy, as when she describes how both parents ended up at the bottom of the cliff ("the heavier one reached out to grasp her—reached too far; grasped too well"). Elsewhere, she strikes an earnest note as the women reunite in Ireland and reckon with Olwen's history of alcoholism. The inconsistent tone can be jarring, but Hughes shines when weaving the dense intellectual material of the three academic sisters' work into their dialogue ("Just don't start on about the mind-body separateness of a pint of Guinness," Maeve jokes to Nell). This one perplexes and stimulates in equal measure.
