'Caoilinn Hughes is a massive talent.' Anthony Doerr, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All the Light We Cannot See
An unforgettable young woman navigates Dublin, London and New York, striving to build a life raft for her loved ones in the midst of 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. Raised in Dublin by single-minded, careerist parents, Gael observes from a young age how a person's ambitions and ideals can be compromised.
When Gael's financier father walks out during the economic crash of 2008, her family fractures. Her mother, a once-formidable orchestral conductor, becomes a shadow of her former self, and a tragic incident prevents her unwell brother Guthrie from finishing school. Determined not to let her loved ones fall victim to circumstance, Gael leaves Dublin for the leather-lined, coke-dusted social clubs of London, then Manhattan's gallery scene during the throes of the Occupy movement, always working an angle, but slowly becoming a stranger to those who know her.
Written in electric, heart-stopping prose, Orchid & the Wasp is a novel about gigantic ambitions and social upheaval, chewing through sexuality, class, and politics, and crackling with joyful, anarchic fury. It challenges bootstraps morality, questioning what we owe one another and what we earn, what makes for a good life, and how events in our lives can turn us into people we never intended to be. A first novel of astonishing talent, Orchid & the Wasp announces Caoilinn Hughes as one of the most exciting literary writers working today.