Orchid & the Wasp
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Caoilinn Hughes
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By:
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Caoilinn Hughes
About this listen
"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 AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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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)
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Story
In 1965 Manhattan, patrons flock to Masha’s to savor its brisket bourguignon and impeccable service and to admire its dashing owner and head chef Peter Rashkin, the most eligible bachelor in town. But Peter does not care for the parade of eligible women who come to the restaurant hoping to catch his eye. Running Masha’s consumes him, as does his terrible guilt over surviving the horrors of the Nazi death camp while his wife, Masha - the restaurant’s namesake - and two young daughters perished. Then exquisitely beautiful June Bouquet, an up-and-coming young model, appears at the restaurant, piercing Peter’s guard.
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STIMULATES THE HEART, MIND AND IMAGINATION
- By Miss Manners on 07-01-18
By: Jenna Blum
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Trading Dreams at Midnight
- By: Diane McKinney-Whetstone
- Narrated by: Shari Peele
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Diane McKinney-Whetstone, the award-winning and best-selling author of Tumbling, presents Trading Dreams at Midnight - - an Essence Book Club Recommended Read. Back in 1984, 15-year-old Neena's mother left and never came back. And now Neena is following in her footsteps.
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Hard to follow
- By Nevada on 08-13-10
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Lionel Asbo
- State of England
- By: Martin Amis
- Narrated by: Alex Jennings
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Lionel Asbo, a terrifying yet weirdly loyal thug (self-named after England's notorious "Anti-Social Behaviour Order"), has always looked out for his ward and nephew, the orphaned Desmond Pepperdine. He provides him with fatherly career advice (always carry a knife, for example) and is determined they should share the joys of pit bulls (fed with lots of Tabasco sauce), Internet porn, and all manner of more serious criminality. Des, on the other hand, desires nothing more than books to read and a girl to love .
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Jēz...us! Just don't buy it for your Grans.
- By Darwin8u on 01-03-13
By: Martin Amis
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A Study in Charlotte
- Charlotte Holmes, Book 1
- By: Brittany Cavallaro
- Narrated by: Graham Halstead, Julia Whelan
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Jamie Watson has always been intrigued by Charlotte Holmes; after all, their great-great-great-grandfathers were one of the most infamous pairs in history. But the Holmes family has always been odd, and Charlotte is no exception. She's inherited Sherlock's volatility and some of his vices - and when Jamie and Charlotte end up at the same Connecticut boarding school, Charlotte makes it clear she's not looking for friends.
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3.5 ☆s
- By Ashley C on 01-21-18
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The Night Ferry
- By: Michael Robotham
- Narrated by: Clare Corbett
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Police detective Ali Barba receives an urgent letter from her estranged friend Cate. Startled by the letter's alarming tone and eager to atone for egregious past actions, Ali meets Cate at their high-school class reunion. The obviously pregnant Cate begs Ali to stop those who are trying to take her baby. But the plot takes a bizarre twist when a careening car kills Cate - and Ali discovers the truth about Cate's pregnancy.
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An ok read
- By Elgee on 02-11-08
By: Michael Robotham
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Black & White
- By: Dani Shapiro
- Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Clara Brodeur has spent her entire adult life pulling herself away from her famous mother, the renowned and controversial photographer Ruth Dunne, whose towering reputation rests on the unsettling nude portraits she took of her young daughter from the ages of three to 14. As Clara charts a path connecting her childhood with her adult life, Shapiro's novel weaves together past and present in images as stark and intense as the photographs that tore the Dunnes apart.
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It was okay
- By Lucy7 on 02-13-19
By: Dani Shapiro
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Blue Blood
- A Debutante Dropout Mystery, Book 1
- By: Susan McBride
- Narrated by: Amy McFadden
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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To the dismay of her high-society mother, Cissy, Dallas heiress Andy Kendricks wants no part of the Junior League life - opting instead for a job as a website designer and a passel of unpedigreed pals. Now her good friend, Molly O'Brien, is in bad trouble, accused of killing her boss at the local restaurant Jugs. Though no proper deb would ever set foot in such a sleazy dive, Andy's soon slipping into skintight hot pants and a stuffed triple D bra to gain employment there and somehow help clear Molly's name.
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Cheesy
- By Shubnum on 10-22-15
By: Susan McBride
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Strong Motion
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: Scott Aiello
- Length: 20 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Louis Holland arrives in Boston in a spring of ecological upheaval (a rash of earthquakes on the North Shore) and odd luck: the first one kills his grandmother. Louis tries to maintain his independence, but falls in love with a Harvard seismologist whose discoveries about the earthquakes' cause complicate everything.
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Compelling Story, Ridiculous Narrator
- By DianeReads on 02-28-16
By: Jonathan Franzen
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London Fields
- By: Martin Amis
- Narrated by: Steven Pacey
- Length: 21 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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The murderee is Nicola Six, a "black hole" of sex and self-loathing who is intent on orchestrating her own extinction. The murderer may be Keith Talent, a violent lowlife whose only passions are pornography and darts; or the rich, honorable, and dimly romantic Guy Clinch. As Nicola leads her suitors towards the precipice, London--and, indeed, the whole world--seems to shamble after them in a corrosively funny novel of complexity and morality.
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Big chewy novel, excellent narration
- By Sand on 08-21-14
By: Martin Amis
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (Unabridged Selections)
- By: Edited by David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris, Mary-Louise Parker, Cherry Jones
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
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Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
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The Undoing of Saint Silvanus
- By: Beth Moore
- Narrated by: Shannon McManus
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Only God knew why Jillian Slater agreed to return to New Orleans on the news that her father had finally drunk himself to death. It's not like they were close. She hadn't seen him - or her grandmother, the ice queen - in almost 20 years. But when Adella Atwater, the manager of her grandmother's apartment house, called and said her expenses would be paid if she'd fly in for the burial, a free trip to New Orleans was too intriguing to resist.
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Classic Beth, highly recommend!!
- By Susan on 12-22-16
By: Beth Moore
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The Wangs vs. the World
- By: Jade Chang
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Charles Wang is mad at America. A brash, lovable immigrant businessman who built a cosmetics empire and made a fortune, he's just been ruined by the financial crisis. Now all Charles wants is to get his kids safely stowed away so that he can go to China and attempt to reclaim his family's ancestral lands - and his pride. Outrageously funny and full of charm, The Wangs vs. the World is an entirely fresh look at what it means to belong in America - and how going from glorious riches to (still name-brand) rags brings one family together in a way money never could.
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Spectacular
- By Barbara on 10-11-16
By: Jade Chang
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The Good Goodbye
- By: Carla Buckley
- Narrated by: Ali Ahn, Suzy Jackson, Eva Kaminsky
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Two cousins, Rory and Arden, lie unconscious in a hospital burn unit. The fire, which broke out in their shared college dorm room, killed another student, and the police want answers. Tension between Rory and Arden's parents was already at an all-time high before the fire, owing to a recent financial crisis and the decline of the family business. As the parents huddle anxiously in the waiting room, carefully avoiding the subject of their own unraveling relationships, disturbing truths come to light.
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I could not stop listening.
- By Amy Davis on 05-29-16
By: Carla Buckley
What listeners say about Orchid & the Wasp
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Nicole Del Sesto
- 10-28-18
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.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Kimberly Hoover
- 08-13-18
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.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Amelia Saul
- 07-26-23
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.
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