Sting In Her Tale

An Irish writer with Kiwi ties offers a witty, readable tale of a young woman’s campaign against neo-liberalism.

- Nicholas Reid

There’s a type of orchid that looks like a female wasp, so it attracts the male wasp to help pollinate the flower. This isn’t explained anywhere in Caoilinn Hughes’ Orchid & the Wasp, but it’s clearly the novel’s major metaphor for female duplicity suckering in gullible males.

Hughes, who, while she was living in New Zealand, delivered a much-acclaimed debut collection of poetry, Gathering Evidence, is part of a new generation of Irish writers: hip, satirical, middle class, university educated and diving into ideas that weren’t once the norm in Irish writing.