Profoundly moving in its delicacy, Caoilinn Hughes's The Alternatives is a portrait of four brilliant sisters moving through the grief of life after death.
The four Flattery sisters, Olwen, Nell, Maeve, and Rhona, as children were orphaned, bringing their childhoods quickly into a new phase where they must fend and rear themselves. The oldest Olwen took on the pressures of raising the younger siblings. As a unit of four, self-sufficiency became their survival tactic. But now, as the narrative unfolds, they are now in their thirties, and living disparate lives across the globe.
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There is an incredible complexity to not only these interwoven narratives, but also in the depth of research Hughes has conducted in giving each sister her own PhD, in geology, political science, philosophy, and cookery. It’s impossible not to be enraptured by the paragraphs that begin with these niche PhD interests and then unspool into sheer lyrical brilliance.
But beneath the sisters’ successes linger deep rooted traumas. After a day of lecturing at an Irish university, Olwen gets on her bike and cycles into the night, disappearing from all responsibilities. Her sisters, spread across the world from London to the States, set out to find her. When they do, she’s in a cottage in rural Ireland, not quite off the grid but close. The sisters then reckon with the wounds created by their past. It’s there that the sisters’ peel back the layers of resentment and shared hurt.
The Alternatives, strewn with gorgeous prose, is a rare jewel, one to be read and read again.
The Alternatives is published by OneWorld
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