The Alternatives

A Novel

By: Caoilinn Hughes

Narrated by: Sarah Bolger, Aisling Franciosi, Caoilinn Hughes, Dominique Mcelligott, Liam Heslin, John Keating

“A bold, beautiful, complex novel, and I can’t wait to read what Hughes writes next. She, too, is an unstoppable force.”—New York Times Book Review

“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

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.

©2024 Caoilinn Hughes (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“I wish I knew how Caoilinn Hughes has managed to write a book of such depth and gravity that is also so gripping and relentlessly funny. 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, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Trust

“The Alternatives is fizzy, brainy, and brilliant, always at the service of a drama of great emotional power. Caoilinn Hughes is an extraordinarily gifted writer.”—Joseph O’Neill, author of Netherland and The Dog

“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

Great character development.

No resolution of anything was frustrating. The book ended abruptly. Not sure if this is for a series, but it left me wanting.

Loved it.

This book isn’t going to be for everyone because it leaves a lot of unanswered questions. But the ending is true to the thesis of the book, which is when a woman has given all that she has to everyone else in her life, what is left for herself?

Thoughts

Characters are the interesting. Love the philosophical argument. Don't push so much on areviewers .enough!

Confusion

Characters hard to discern from one another, save Alwin. Too much intellectual detail, not enough story.

I want this story to continue

I’ve become so enamored of the sisters and Dan that it’s a sorrow I can’t hear some of the rest of their story, their lives. This was Wonderful!!

The pompousness, the try.

Disliked the novel because it was typical & yet disjointed in a literary try not in a good way

False advertising

The book advertised by the publisher and the one I listened to were completely different. Yes, the parents died in mysterious circumstances, and those circumstances remained a mystery...it was never revealed in the book. These four "sisters" sounded more like colleagues to me, complete strangers in fact, getting together and hardly having a thing to say to each other. The author took the opportunity of four different careers to lecture on everything from global warming to continental drift to veganism to politics in Northern Ireland. It was the oddest collection of philosophies and it was hard to keep interested. At one point, as the four sisters are gathered at the bungalow of the eldest one, eventually found (who keeps waiting for them to leave), one of them asks, "Why are we here?" Indeed. Unless you enjoy esoteric discussions of high-brow topics, save your money.

Hard to follow and understand

Too much technical and irrelevant detail. I couldn't follow and I thought it was boring. Sometime Irish dialect hard to understand.

It’s a tie between boring story and painful sophomoric political rants

I didn’t like the slow moving story and I didn’t like the annoying, idiotically simplistic lectures about global warming, Brexit, big pharma, etc etc. It was stupid