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An unforgettable young woman navigates Dublin, London and New York, striving to build a life raft for her loved-ones amidst economic and familial collapse.
In this dazzlingly original debut novel, award-winning Irish writer Caoilinn Hughes introduces a heroine of mythic proportions in the form of one Gael Foess. A tough, thoughtful, and savvy opportunist, Gael is determined to live life on her own terms. Raised in Dublin by single-minded, careerist parents, Gael learns early how a person's ambitions and ideals can be compromised - and she refuses to let her vulnerable, unwell younger brother, Guthrie, suffer such sacrifices.
When Gael's financier father walks out on them during the economic crash of 2008, her family fractures. Her mother, a once-formidable orchestral conductor, becomes a shadow. And a fateful incident prevents Guthrie from finishing high school. Determined not to let her loved-ones fall victim to circumstance, Gael leaves Dublin for the coke-dusted social clubs of London and Manhattan's gallery scene, always working an angle, but beginning to become a stranger to those who love her.
Written in electric, heart-stopping prose, Orchid & the Wasp is a novel about gigantic ambitions and hard-won truths, chewing through sexuality, class, and politics, and crackling with joyful, anarchic fury. It challenges bootstraps morality with questions of what we owe one another and what we earn. A first novel of astonishing talent, Orchid & the Wasp announces Caoilinn Hughes as one of the most exciting literary writers working today.
"Hughes's breezy approach, clear love of language, and endearingly flawed central character contribute enough charm to compensate for a not entirely credible plot." - Publishers Weekly
"[A] visceral and electrifying debut … in Gael, Hughes has created a mesmerizing and compelling force." – Booklist
"This inventive book will entice readers who prefer the ambiguity of questions to the simplicity of answers." - Library Journal
"As strange, musical, and carefully calculated as its unusual heroine." – Kirkus
"A gem of a novel about the way we live now." – Elle
"Some serious intellectual themes are explored: the crisis of late capitalism; the redemptive power of art and love; free expression in sexual matters; and much else besides. But maybe most strikingly, Gael Foess makes a telling contribution to the unlikeable female narrator debate… readers are going to love her." – Sunday Times (UK)
"Orchid & the Wasp is a gorgeous novel told in an onrush of wit and ferocity. Art-forging, smack-talking, long-distance-running Gael Foess, three times smarter than everyone around her, proves to be an unforgettable heroine, and her journey will rattle your most basic assumptions about money, ambition, and the nature of love. Caoilinn Hughes is a massive talent." - Anthony Doerr, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All the Light We Cannot See
"A razor sharp wit and an astonishing psychological and emotional perceptiveness combine to yield uncommonly rich portraiture in this bracing book by a deadly talented writer, in prose so refined one slows to savor each beautifully unfolding sentence." - Matthew Thomas, New York Times bestselling author of We Are Not Ourselves
"Though the stories she tells work their way through elaborate worlds, it is her characters, detailed with sharp and subtle grace, which power the engine of Caoilinn Hughes's vivid prose." - Amelia Gray, author of Isadora and Gutshot
"By turns poetic, hilarious and raw, this novel gives us hope that love and the retrieval of spirit are not only achievable, but worth pursuing to the very last sentence." - Ana Menedez, Pushcart Prize-winning author of In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd
"Orchid & the Wasp is an ambitious, richly inventive and highly entertaining account of the way we live now. Caoilinn Hughes writes with authority and insight, and her novel is as up-to-date as tomorrow's financial-page headlines." - John Banville?, Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea
"Orchid & the Wasp is a tremendously engaging novel, brimming with sparky humor and astute observations. Caoilinn Hughes' prose fizzes with wit and intelligence. A joy to read." - Danielle McLaughlin, Saboteur Award-winning author of Dinosaurs On Other Planets
"My favorite discovery this year. Hughes's characters are rare, like no one you've read before. This is an entirely original novel, dazzling and beautiful, disturbingly cold and insistent." - David Vann, bestselling author of Bright Air Black and Aquarium
"Caoilinn Hughes's crafted, intricate language is a joy and her characters strut their many flaws with panache. Orchid & the Wasp is an up-to-the-minute, radiant début from a deeply talented writer." - Nuala O'Connor, author of Miss Emily
"Fresh, playful and exuberant: Hughes has arrived with a heady style that is full of surprise and invention." - Paul Lynchm, Prix Libr'à Nous-winning author of Red Sky in Morning
"Caoilinn Hughes is the real thing - an urgent, funny, painstaking and heartfelt writer. Orchid & the Wasp is a startling debut full of the moral complexity, grief and strange bewilderments of humanity." - A.L. Kennedy, Costa Prize-winning author of Day and Serious Sweet
This information about Orchid and the Wasp was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: © Robin Christian
Caoilinn Hughes is the author of Orchid & the Wasp, which won the Collyer Bristow Prize and was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, and The Wild Laughter, which won the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award and was longlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize. She was recently the Oscar Wilde Centre Writer Fellow at Trinity College Dublin, and is now a Cullman Fellow at New York Public Library.
Name Pronunciation
Caoilinn Hughes: KAY-lin hews
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