The Woman Who Can’t Stand Up But Must Keep Going

'The Alternatives' and Us Millennials at the Mercy of Neocapitalism

News & Reviews Magazine

This article is part of ‘CaoilinnRama’, our August special edition. Read the editor’s letter to see what other fantastic writing has just been published. If you’re annoyed that it’s paywalled, then that means you wanted to read it, which means you value it. These writers get paid for what they do because their work is valuable.

Photo by Simoen van der Meent

The piece you’re reading now is by Mel Fulton. Mel is a writer, editor and broadcaster. She hosts Literati Glitterati, a book show and podcast on Melbourne’s Triple R, and is the books editor of The Big Issue Australia.

The Woman Who Can’t Stand Up But Must Keep Going: The Alternatives and Us Millennial at the Mercy of Neocapitalism

‘It’s easy to forget the act of resistance involved in simply standing,’ writes the shifting narrative voice in Caoilinn Hughes’ most recent novel, The Alternatives. The line is about Nell Flattery, the youngest of the book’s four starring sisters. They’re all single, all in their 30s, all PhD holders, and all grappling in their own way with the same question: how to live a meaningful life in a catastrophic modern world.

For each of them, the answer is tied up in some way with going to work. And for Nell, a philosopher, this is troubled massively by a sick body and a market left to roam freer than a Joni Mitchell tune. The Alternatives is not a meme—I don’t need to choose my fighter—but as a sick bitch in the gig economy, so tired she may as well be celibate, with greying hair, recurring bad dreams, and a casual flirtation with personality Type A, I feel like Nell chose me.