6 must-read irish literature books like The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes

Cover of The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes

The Alternatives

By: Caoilinn Hughes

3.48

Format: 352 pages, Hardcover

“A tale about sisterhood, a novel of ideas, a chronicle of our collective follies, a requiem for ou…

If you liked the irish literature plot in The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes , here is a list of 6 books like this:

Cover of The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer  Croft

1. The Extinction of Irena Rey

By: Jennifer Croft

3.26

Format: 320 pages, Hardcover

From the International Booker Prize–winning translator and Women's Prize finalist, a propulsive, be… read more

Similar categories in Jennifer Croft's The Extinction of Irena Rey book and Caoilinn Hughes's The Alternatives

  • audiobook
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
"The sun was higher, a white light between the birches that arched and bared their lenticels, shimmering their leaves."

-Jennifer Croft, The Extinction of Irena Rey

"Glittering crystalline rainbows extended in every direction, while gentle gold beams swept between the softened trees that sparkled and beckoned and forbade."

-Jennifer Croft, The Extinction of Irena Rey

"It was a new moon, but the stars of the northern hemisphere transformed her slim sinuous home, converting the oak strips on the convex walls into quicksilver that momentarily held the frenzied shadow…"

-Jennifer Croft, The Extinction of Irena Rey

"It was barely spring in the southern hemisphere, and Buenos Aires was not yet soft, or sumptuous, or purple.* *I wasn't sure what this meant at first, but when I asked this author to explain it, she …"

-Jennifer Croft, The Extinction of Irena Rey

Cover of All Fours by Miranda July

2. All Fours

By: Miranda July

3.81

Format: 336 pages, Hardcover

The New York Times–bestselling author of The First Bad Man returns with an irreverently sexy, tende… read more

Similar categories in Miranda July's All Fours book and Caoilinn Hughes's The Alternatives

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • audiobook
"But maybe the road split between: a life spent longing vs. a life that was continually surprising"

-Miranda July, All Fours

"Maybe we shouldn't do that," Jordi said. "Flatten ourselves like that. Erratic doesn't have to mean crazy or irresponsible. Shouldn't we be normalizing change?"

-Miranda July, All Fours

"I guess any calling, no mater what it is, is a kind of unresolved ache," I said, giving in to knowing more than him. "It's a problem that you can't fix, but there is some relief in knowing you will c…"

-Miranda July, All Fours

"For me lying created just the right amount of problems and what you saw was just one of my four or five faces- each real, each with different needs. The only dangerous lie was one that asked me to co…"

-Miranda July, All Fours

Cover of Long Island (Eilis Lacey, #2) by Colm Tóibín

3. Long Island (Eilis Lacey, #2)

By: Colm Tóibín

3.82

Format: 294 pages, Hardcover

From the beloved, critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author comes a spectacularly movi… read more

Similar categories in Colm Tóibín's Long Island (Eilis Lacey, #2) book and Caoilinn Hughes's The Alternatives

  • literary fiction
  • family
  • fiction
  • ireland
  • irish literature
  • audiobook
Cover of Wild Houses by Colin  Barrett

4. Wild Houses

By: Colin Barrett

3.78

Format: 272 pages, Hardcover

A darkly funny and deeply moving debut novel about crimes of desperation, dreams abandoned, and sma… read more

Similar categories in Colin Barrett's Wild Houses book and Caoilinn Hughes's The Alternatives

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • ireland
  • irish literature
  • audiobook
"What you are in, Dev, is a holding pattern, only you're not holding out for anything."

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

"All boys, all children, are capable of cruelty at the right juncture of opportunity and circumstance, but only a few become committed prodigies of sadism..."

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

"In the dream, exactly as he had in real life, he sensed the slow, inexorable approach of the shapeless, prospectless days to come, days when there would be no need to get out of bed or brush his teet…"

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

"He looked around the empty kitchen. A part of him wanted this of course. A part of him had always wanted this, to be alone, away from even the prospect of any demand upon him to talk, to interact, to…"

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

Cover of Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel

5. Headshot

By: Rita Bullwinkel

3.63

Format: 224 pages, Hardcover

An electrifying debut novel from an “unusually gifted writer” (Lorrie Moore) about the radical inti… read more

Similar categories in Rita Bullwinkel's Headshot book and Caoilinn Hughes's The Alternatives

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • audiobook
"The desire to please people is the desire to not be singular."

-Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot

"Tanya Maw's sister is two years older, the perfect age gap for wisdom transmission."

-Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot

"It can be intoxicating to play a sport that requires one to look in their opponent's eyes."

-Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot

"It's a warmth that she'll feel again very few times in her life. It's almost like love, but it has a surer, less desperate edge to it."

-Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot

Cover of The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry

6. The Heart in Winter

By: Kevin Barry

4.02

Format: 256 pages, Hardcover

Award-winning writer Kevin Barry’s first novel set in America, a savagely funny and achingly romant… read more

Similar categories in Kevin Barry's The Heart in Winter book and Caoilinn Hughes's The Alternatives

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • ireland
  • irish literature
  • audiobook
"... the morning was starkly lit under a migraine - white and vast opening sky."

-Kevin Barry, The Heart in Winter

Cover of Whale Fall by Elizabeth  O'Connor

7. Whale Fall

By: Elizabeth O'Connor

3.87

Format: 224 pages, Hardcover

A stunning debut from an award-winning writer, about loss, isolation, folklore, and the joy and dis… read more

Similar categories in Elizabeth O'Connor's Whale Fall book and Caoilinn Hughes's The Alternatives

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • audiobook
Cover of Clear by Carys Davies

8. Clear

By: Carys Davies

3.92

Format: 196 pages, Hardcover

A stunning, exquisite novel from an award-winning writer about a minister dispatched to a remote is… read more

Similar categories in Carys Davies's Clear book and Caoilinn Hughes's The Alternatives

  • audiobook
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
Cover of The Coast Road by Alan Murrin

9. The Coast Road

By: Alan Murrin

3.99

Format: 320 pages, Hardcover

A poignant and heartbreaking debut novel set in the 1990s in a claustrophobic coast town. With divo… read more

Similar categories in Alan Murrin's The Coast Road book and Caoilinn Hughes's The Alternatives

  • literary fiction
  • family
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • ireland
  • irish literature
  • audiobook
Cover of Enlightenment by Sarah Perry

10. Enlightenment

By: Sarah Perry

3.70

Format: 384 pages, Hardcover

A dazzling new work of literary fiction from the author of The Essex Serpent, a story of love and a… read more

Similar categories in Sarah Perry's Enlightenment book and Caoilinn Hughes's The Alternatives

  • audiobook
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
"Thomas [Hart] lived where he'd been born, and where (so he often thought without rancor) he'd very likely die; and if he lived alone he was not lonely, that being a condition not of solitude but of l…"

-Sarah Perry, Enlightenment

"So I told her this: that it's true I've only rarely been happy, and perhaps more often been sad. But I have been content. I have lived. I have felt everything available to me: I've been faithless, de…"

-Sarah Perry, Enlightenment

"I wish I could say, James, that we forgave each other in the end. I wish I could say: she put her head on my shoulder and I welcomed it and we laughed and said all was well. But in fact we were quiet…"

-Sarah Perry, Enlightenment

"...in the ordinary way we love because we're loved, and give more or less what we're given. But to love without return is more strange and more wonderful, and not the humiliating thing I'd once taken…"

-Sarah Perry, Enlightenment

Cover of This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud

11. This Strange Eventful History

By: Claire Messud

3.63

Format: 448 pages, Hardcover

An immersive, masterful story of a family born on the wrong side of history, from one of our finest… read more

Similar categories in Claire Messud's This Strange Eventful History book and Caoilinn Hughes's The Alternatives

  • literary fiction
  • family
  • fiction
  • audiobook
"Family life, like playing chess, involved always thinking several steps ahead."

-Claire Messud, This Strange Eventful History

"Literature... Now, that's a religion I can believe in. That is perhaps my God."

-Claire Messud, This Strange Eventful History

"... she'd been a fool, enamored of a figment, had created the soul of a man who never existed -"

-Claire Messud, This Strange Eventful History

"All-U-Can Hi-way 4-Sale Thru. This American English thrilled him - its energy, its freedom, its carelessness."

-Claire Messud, This Strange Eventful History

Cover of Sandwich by Catherine Newman

12. Sandwich

By: Catherine Newman

3.75

Format: 229 pages, Hardcover

From the beloved author of We All Want Impossible Things, a moving, hilarious story of a family sum… read more

Similar categories in Catherine Newman's Sandwich book and Caoilinn Hughes's The Alternatives

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • family
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • audiobook
"What does loss look like, in your body? Where is it? It feels like an air bubble stuck in your psyche. It feels like peering down into a deep hole. The vertigo of that. The potential for obliteration…"

-Catherine Newman, Sandwich

"We're just ruined by sex, women---our bodies, our psyches. We're sexually assaulted every five minutes. We're infected with everything. Traumatized by conceiving, by not conceiving. But let's keep at…"

-Catherine Newman, Sandwich

Cover of The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes

13. The Alternatives

By: Caoilinn Hughes

3.48

Format: 352 pages, Hardcover

“A tale about sisterhood, a novel of ideas, a chronicle of our collective follies, a requiem for ou… read more

Similar categories in Caoilinn Hughes's The Alternatives book and Caoilinn Hughes's The Alternatives

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • irish literature
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • family
  • novels
  • ireland
  • international
  • audiobook
Cover of Blue Ruin by Hari Kunzru

14. Blue Ruin

By: Hari Kunzru

3.86

Format: 272 pages, Hardcover

From one of the sharpest voices in fiction today, a profound and enthralling novel about beauty, po… read more

Similar categories in Hari Kunzru's Blue Ruin book and Caoilinn Hughes's The Alternatives

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • audiobook
Cover of Bear by Julia  Phillips

15. Bear

By: Julia Phillips

3.38

Format: 304 pages, Hardcover

A mesmerising novel of two sisters on a Pacific Northwest island whose lives are upended by an unex… read more

Similar categories in Julia Phillips's Bear book and Caoilinn Hughes's The Alternatives

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • family
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • audiobook
"There'd been only three hundred students in the whole school, which made it a tiny, gossipy hellhole, a bucket of crabs snapping at each other and falling over themselves."

-Julia Phillips, Bear

"What was Sam afraid of? Withering away here. Dreaming of chances she'd never be able to take, and shriveling up from that denial, getting poorer and put under more pressure and pushed farther from th…"

-Julia Phillips, Bear

Cover of The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

16. The Safekeep

By: Yael van der Wouden

4.08

Format: 272 pages, Hardcover

An exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the … read more

Similar categories in Yael van der Wouden's The Safekeep book and Caoilinn Hughes's The Alternatives

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • audiobook
Cover of Held by Anne   Michaels

17. Held

By: Anne Michaels

3.66

Format: 240 pages, Hardcover

A breathtaking and mysterious new novel from the beloved Anne Michaels, internationally bestselling… read more

Similar categories in Anne Michaels's Held book and Caoilinn Hughes's The Alternatives

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • audiobook
"Who can say what happens when we are remembered?"

-Anne Michaels, Held

"Do we really need our own misery to teach us to be kind?"

-Anne Michaels, Held

"We know life is finite. Why should we believe death lasts forever?"

-Anne Michaels, Held

"Would he know the moment of his death or would it be like night falling."

-Anne Michaels, Held

Cover of Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

18. Long Island Compromise

By: Taffy Brodesser-Akner

3.88

Format: 464 pages, Hardcover

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An exhilarating novel about one American family, the dark moment that shatter… read more

Similar categories in Taffy Brodesser-Akner's Long Island Compromise book and Caoilinn Hughes's The Alternatives

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • audiobook
Cover of The Amendments by Niamh Mulvey

19. The Amendments

By: Niamh Mulvey

3.84

Format: 336 pages, Hardcover

Delving into the lives of three generations of women, The Amendments is an extraordinary novel abou… read more

Similar categories in Niamh Mulvey's The Amendments book and Caoilinn Hughes's The Alternatives

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • ireland
  • irish literature
  • audiobook
Cover of Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

20. Creation Lake

By: Rachel Kushner

3.67

Format: 416 pages, Hardcover

From Rachel Kushner, a Booker Prize finalist, two-time National Book Award finalist, and “one of th… read more

Similar categories in Rachel Kushner's Creation Lake book and Caoilinn Hughes's The Alternatives

  • audiobook
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
"Charisma does not originate inside the person called "charismatic." It comes from the need of others to believe that special people exist."

-Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake

"Plus, Lucien said, a lot of them had come from other social milieus and had tattoos from earlier lives, since people who change affinities are the same kinds of people who are attracted to the perman…"

-Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake

"My biker and these tramps, as people who organize their life around some subculture or other: People can sometimes pretend so thoroughly that they forget they are pretending. At which point, it could…"

-Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake

"I could sense him gathering a false hindsight that afternoon in the Place des Vosges, shaping a retrospective narrative, the thing a person tells himself about fate, about how everything had seemed f…"

-Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake

Cover of Woo Woo by Ella Baxter

21. Woo Woo

By: Ella Baxter

3.53

Format: None pages, Kindle Edition

A thrilling and eccentric novel about what it means to make art as a woman, and about the powerful … read more

Similar categories in Ella Baxter's Woo Woo book and Caoilinn Hughes's The Alternatives

  • audiobook
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary

21 must-read fiction books like The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes

Transform Your Habits

The Extinction of Irena Rey

Jennifer Croft

3.26

Transform Your Habits

All Fours

Miranda July

3.81

Transform Your Habits

Long Island (Eilis Lacey, #2)

Colm Tóibín

3.82

Transform Your Habits

Wild Houses

Colin Barrett

3.78

View all the books

20 best-selling fiction books like Woo Woo by Ella Baxter

Transform Your Habits

Stone Yard Devotional

Charlotte Wood

3.68

Transform Your Habits

Safe Haven

Shankari Chandran

4.18

Transform Your Habits

The Alternatives

Caoilinn Hughes

3.48

Transform Your Habits

The Work

Bri Lee

3.43

View all the books

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