Orchid & the Wasp

A Novel

By: Caoilinn Hughes

Narrated by: Caoilinn Hughes

Length: 12 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

"A gem of a novel." (Elle)

"A winning debut." (The New Yorker)

"Caoilinn Hughes is a massive talent." (Anthony Doerr, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All the Light We Cannot See)

Winner of the Collyer Bristow Prize

Shortlisted for the Butler Literary Award

Shortlisted for the Hearst Big Book Awards 

Longlisted for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award 

Longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award 2020

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.

©2018 Caoilinn Hughes (P)2018 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

Shortlisted for the 2018 Butler Literary Award
Library Journal: "Best Summer Debut Novels"

"Ireland produces a new literary star at a rate of one a month, it seems; first among equals for 2018, however, has to be Caoilinn Hughes." (Irish Echo)

"A winning debut novel...Hughes, a poet, touches the prose with a comic wand.... Orchid and the Wasp delivers a fantasy of competence, the kind that is in dialogue, if not always complete agreement, with morality." (Katy Waldman, The New Yorker)

Breathtakingly beautiful prose

I was not surprised to learn that Ms Hughes is a poet. The language of this novel, it’s cadence, it’s word painting, makes it worth every moment of listening. I wanted more.

Breathtaking, shocking, and gorgeous

Hughes’s writing feels like a hologram illuminating the spooky undergrowth of this moment of humanity. Her metaphors and images all exist in the present world, not in a cleverist way, not to be weird, but to be more precise. A man smiles a pistachioed smile. Never heard it, but know what it is.
I laughed out loud so many times. I was also covered in goosebumps when it ended.
Sometimes to be oneself, one cannot fold into love.
So beautiful.

The "other" Milkman

This book hit my radar as as a possible Man Booker nominee, and it's a shame it wasn't nominated - especially with books like Snap and Sabrina on the list. Though nothing like "Milkman", it was enough like "Milkman" that if both books were on the list it would have been puzzling. If that makes any sense. I'm in the love-camp on "Milkman" by the way.

This is a remarkable novel. Hughes is obviously bright and talented. The writing stellar, the characters (FLAWED) and interesting, and the story kept me enthralled the whole way through. Gael is snarky and at times misguided (or properly guided but mis-actioned), self-absorbed, complicated, loyal, funny - you know ... human. The family dynamic is fraught, dysfunctional, complex, you know ... human.

Music is a central theme in this book - reminding me of another Booker nom, "Do Not Say We Have Nothing." In that book the music aspects really bored me, but in this book I felt they came to life.

I think (and I could be wrong) those who didn't love "Milkman" would like this one better. I feel like there was more going on both with characters and story, and can't imagine this being called "boring." I'd love for one of my non-Milkman-loving friends to read it and let me know.

I ended up doing the audio on this, which was read by the author (immediate inward groan) - she was fantastic. Very talented in many areas. Probably a lot like Gael.

This book wasn't perfect, there was a caricature or two, an annoying plot point here and there, and times when the story felt a bit bogged down, but for me they were easy to overlook and I ended up loving it.