Orchid and the Wasp

May 15, 2018
A fast-talking young woman sets out to help her family at the height of Ireland's recession in this language-driven debut.From a young age, Gael Foess is a hustler: ambitious, arrogant, and more capable than most adults. After her father walks out, Gael must care for her unusual family on her own. There's her mother, Sive, conductor for Ireland's National Symphony Orchestra, who struggles with an impenetrable depression and is largely distant toward her children, and Guthrie, Gael's holier-than-thou younger brother, who suffers seizures from a mental disorder that result in beautiful visions. While Sive and Guthrie each possess artistic genius they don't know how to spin into comfortable livelihoods, Gael's true talent lies in convincing unsuspecting strangers to believe the stories she weaves out of air. "The recession made it worse: the false-humility epidemic," thinks Gael. "But it's not enough for your relatives to know your worth. For your gifts to be put in a cabinet like ornamental photo frames, destined to tarnish." Instead, Gael wants her family to shine. She tries first to scam her way into London Business School, then steals her mother's compositions to solicit interest from orchestras around the world, and finally flies to New York at the height of the Occupy movement to sell a stunning set of Guthrie's paintings. When a trendy gallery shows interest but requires more paintings to secure a show, Gael hires an artist to forge her brother's work. This is both Gael's crowning achievement and a move that isolates her from her loved ones. For a novel with a con-artist heroine, Hughes' debut is oddly quiet and language-focused. Most of the action takes place off-stage or in long passages of dialogue relayed well after the fact. But Hughes delivers a compelling exploration of what it means to create art, skewering the arbitrary restrictions of art-world gatekeepers along the way. At the emotional heart of this book lies a darker question, though: What does it mean to make a performance of your own life, in service of your family, when the cost might be to lose them forever?As strange, musical, and carefully calculated as its unusual heroine.

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May 21, 2018
The freewheeling first novel by Irish poet Hughes (Gathering Evidence) is dominated more by character than plot, but the determined, daring central character is worthy of the spotlight. The episodic narrative follows Gael from the age of 11, when a scandalous business proposal to her fellow classmates at a Catholic school (to market fake blood capsules for the purpose of faking virginity) gets her invited to “take her depraved influence elsewhere,” through to age 20, when she returns to Ireland after an eventful few months in New York City. With a symphony conductor mother, a financier father, and a pious yet troubled younger brother, Gael has family drama to spare. Fond of both art and money, she concocts a scheme to scam the New York art market. While there, she gets involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement. The book bounces from one extended passage in its heroine’s life to another, leaving the reader to fill in the gaps. While the other characters don’t have Gael’s depth, a few emerge from the crowd. These include Gael’s sensitive brother, Guthrie, who is more resilient than he first appears; her London Business School roommate and potential love interest, Harper; and Wally, the wealthy codger with whom Gael spars on the flight to New York. Hughes’s breezy approach, clear love of language, and endearingly flawed central character contribute enough charm to compensate for a not entirely credible plot. Agent: Bill Clegg, the Clegg Agency.

June 1, 2018
If one sentence could precisely capture the unbridled ambition of Gael Foess, the protagonist in Hughes' visceral and electrifying debut, it would be Gael's response to Isaiah Berlin's line, Freedom for the pike is death for the minnows: How does one become an orca? A childhood defined by distracted indifference from her orchestral conductor mother and banker father shapes Gael irrevocably to the point where she bears the burden for her family, including her fragile brother, Guthrie, who suffers from somatic delusional disorder. The precocious Gael systematically plans her escape from Ireland, sensing that it is in New York that she will finally be able to realize her outsize plans. Gael's ruthless manipulations make her a memorable character, but her fire, uncharacteristically, fizzles out toward the end. The novel also loses pacing as it lingers a tad too long on the Occupy Movement, and its somewhat neat and sappy ending doesn't quite meld with the story's early energy. Nevertheless, in Gael, Hughes has created a mesmerizing and compelling force.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

June 15, 2018

From the moment 11-year-old Gael Foess confronts her dad in the shower while he suds off the scent of another woman, readers know they are meeting a one-of-a-kind heroine. Gael realizes that she will have to support her mother, a symphony conductor who appears oblivious to her family, and her brother, who suffers from a psychosomatic illness. To do this, Gael will model her despised father, Jarleth, a man who, even during the 2008 economic meltdown, worked the system with aplomb. Her mother's new friend Art, recounting an old family story, plants the seeds of a brilliantly deceitful plan in Gael's fertile imagination. Traveling from Dublin to London to Manhattan, Gael reinvents herself in an effort to alter her family's financial trajectory. Along the way, we learn fascinating tidbits about art forgery, musical composition, and the Occupy Wall Street movement. Hard, calculating, and often tone-deaf to the needs of those she loves, Gael is nevertheless an appealing, complex character. Debut novelist Hughes, an award-winning poet, employs wry, crackling prose to proffer existential questions about what constitutes a meaningful life. VERDICT This inventive book will entice readers who prefer the ambiguity of questions to the simplicity of answers. [See Prepub Alert, 1/8/18.]--Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 15, 2018

In this first work of fiction from an award-winning Irish poet, intrepid young Gael Foess endures her self-absorbed parents until her financier father walks out, then travels from Dublin to London to New York to find a way to heal the family and help ailing younger brother Guthrie. Acquired in a heated five-house auction at last year's Frankfurt Book Fair.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.