Fruit of the Dead
3.75 out of 5 stars
Author：Rachel Lyon
Publisher：Scribner
Published：2024-03-05
Page count：320
ISBN：9781668020852
Content Summary
An electric contemporary reimagining of the myth of Persephone and Demeter set over the course of one summer on a lush private island, about addiction and sex, family and independence, and who holds the power in a modern underworld. Camp counselor Cory Ansel, eighteen and aimless, afraid to face her high-strung single mother in New York, is no longer sure where home is when the father of one of her campers offers an alternative. The CEO of a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company, Rolo Picazo is middle-aged, divorced, magnetic. He is also intoxicated by Cory. When Rolo proffers a childcare job (and an NDA), Cory quiets an internal warning and allows herself to be ferried to his private island. Plied with luxury and opiates manufactured by his company, she continues to tell herself she’s in charge. Her mother, Emer, head of a teetering agricultural NGO, senses otherwise. With her daughter seemingly vanished, Emer crosses land and sea to heed a cry for help she alone is convinced she hears. Alternating between the two women’s perspectives, Rachel Lyon’s Fruit of the Dead incorporates its mythic inspiration with a light touch and devastating precision. The result is a tale that explores love, control, obliteration, and America’s own late capitalist mythos. Lyon’s reinvention of Persephone and Demeter’s story makes for a haunting and ecstatic novel that vibrates with lush abandon. Readers will not soon forget it.
Author Introduction
Rachel Lyon is the author of SELF PORTRAIT WITH BOY, a finalist for the Center for Fiction's 2018 First Novel Prize, and FRUIT OF THE DEAD, which is forthcoming from Scribner in 2024. Her short stories have appeared most recently in One Story and The Rumpus. Rachel grew up in Brooklyn, NY, and currently lives in Western Massachusetts with her husband and two young children.
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