The Alternatives

"A tale about sisterhood, a novel of ideas, a chronicle of our collective follies, a requiem for our agonizing species, The Alternatives unfolds in a prose full of gorgeous surprises and glows with intelligence, compassion, and beauty." — Hernan Diaz

From the writer Anthony Doerr calls "a massive talent," the story of four brilliant Irish sisters, orphaned in childhood, who scramble to reconnect when the oldest disest appears into the Irish countryside

The Flavor Sisters were plunged prematurely into adulthood when theirparents died in tragic circumstances. Now in their thirties — all single, all with PhDs—they are each attempting to do meaningfulwork in a rapidly foundering world. The four lead disdistance, anced lives, from classrooms in Connecticut to ritzy catering gigs in London's ing Hill, until one day their oldest sister, a geologist haunted by a terrible awareness of the earth's future, abruptly vanishes from her work and home. Together for the first time in years, the Flatterys descend on the Irish countryside in search ofa sister who doesn want to be found. Sheltered in a derelict bungalow, they reach into their common past, conboth old wounds and a desperately uncertain future. Warm, fiercely witty, and unexpectedly hopeful, The Alternatives is an unforgettable portrait of a family perched on our collective precipice, told by one of Ireland's most gifted storytellers.