Caoilinn Hughes

Prepare to work for your pleasure when you pick up The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes as this novel contains philosophical lectures, Irish slang, and intellectual banter all wrapped up in some challenging structure. Under all of that, The Alternatives looks at four sisters who raised each other after being orphaned and now maintain various levels of relationships from close to not so much. Brought together by one sister’s disappearance into the countryside to live simply, they must confront each other, their personal issues, and the family’s difficult history. Readers looking for a challenging but witty Irish novel about family will not be disappointed with The Alternatives.… (más)

Protagonist Gael Foess is a member of a dysfunctional family. She is a hard-edged narcissist who thinks she knows what is best for everyone and is not afraid to go after it. She follows through on many audacious ideas in an attempt to “help” her family members, though one wonders if it is really a form of control.

Gael’s brother experiences seizures and turns to art to capture his feelings. Her mother is a symphonic composer and conductor who never wanted children. Her father is a wealthy investment banker with rigid and judgmental views. In trying to distance herself from her father, Gael becomes more like him. It is set mostly in 2008-2011 in Dublin, London, and New York, with the economic depression and Occupy Wall Street movement as a backdrop.

This is a character-driven novel with art as one of the primary topics, so it seemed at first glance like something I would enjoy. The author is certainly talented, and I appreciate her expressive writing. However, it was hard to get past the plot holes. For example, oil paintings do not dry in a few days and the gallery reps would surely have noticed. Gael does not learn anything from her experiences, and it is hard to believe she is fully formed at such a young age, so it is hard to care about what happens to her. The writing is strong, but it seemed like a chore to finish it.… (más)

“The night the Chief died, I lost my father and the country lost a battle it wouldn’t confess to be fighting. For the no-collared labouring class. For the decent, dependable patriarch. For right of entry from the field to the garden.”

From this short opening paragraph it’s clear that there will be no happy ending for the Black family. Although the following two, equally short paragraphs (which complete the opening chapter) contain clues about the nature of the ‘devastating choice’ which is made, I’m not going to spell it out because I think the immense power of this story lies in the gradual unfolding of the family relationships and dynamics which influence the choices, past and present, which lead to the shocking conclusion of this remarkable novel.
The story’s setting is rural Ireland in 2014, a country still suffering from the economic recession which followed the 2008 crash. The Black family is in crisis: patriarch Manus, referred to as the Chief by his sons, is terminally-ill and the half-million pound debt he has accrued, the result of a failed investment in a Bulgarian property development, has meant that family farm has been re-mortgaged and, with the recent cuts in the agricultural subsidies, its future viability is in doubt. There is long-standing rivalry between the two brothers: the accepted ‘wisdom’ in the family being that twenty five year old Hart, the narrator of the story, got the looks whilst Cormac, two years older, got the brains, enabling him to go off to university, leaving Hart behind to work on the farm. Hart’s resentment towards his brother is fuelled by the fact that his father’s financial difficulties arose because, wanting to benefit from the pre-2008 boom, which was improving the fortunes of so many in the country, he’d acted on investment advice given to him by Cormac. Whilst it is clear that Hart loves his father, his relationship with his emotionally-cold mother, a former nun, lacks any sort of warmth or closeness, in fact he refers to her by her Christian name, Nóra. He has little patience with her strait-laced attitudes, which he regards as fundamentally hypocritical.
“To move wild laughter in the throat of death? It cannot be, it is impossible: mirth cannot move a soul in agony.”
It is this quote from Shakespeare’s 'Love’s Labour’s Lost' which provided the author with the title for this truly remarkable story of a family, and a country, in crisis. It was only once I turned the final page that I was able to truly appreciate how perfectly apt her choice was for this brutally raw and dark, yet blackly comic, story. Although I found it immediately engaging and almost impossible to put down, it wasn’t a quick read because I found that the dark themes explored, in truly epic, Greek-tragedy style, required frequent reflection. These included familial expectations, intense sibling rivalry, love, guilt, loss, grief, chronic illness, changing societal mores, moral and ethical dilemmas, the echoing impact of history on a nation, faith and the power of the Catholic church, all of which are deftly woven together to create a poignant and unforgettable story.
I marvelled throughout at the author’s wonderful use of language: rich with striking metaphors and similes, with acerbic observations, evocative descriptions and memorable, vibrantly-drawn characters, all rendered in such an admirably succinct way that I’m left feeling that there was neither a wasted nor a superfluous word. Days after finishing this novel its impact remains visceral in its power and I have no hesitation in recommending it, both as a personal and as a group read.
With thanks to NB and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.… (más)