Fruit Fly
A Novel
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4.3 • 15 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
New York Times Bestseller
USA Today Bestseller
An Amazon Top 5 Book of the Year
“A funny and nasty novel about appropriation.”
—The New York Times
“A seething, hilarious, and wildly shrewd takedown of modern identity culture.”
—Caro Claire Burke, author of Yesteryear
“Impeccable, courageous and true.”
—Ocean Vuong, author of The Emperor of Gladness
Go gay. Go sad. Go dark.
A washed-up author will stop at nothing to claw her way back to relevancy—even if it means appropriating a young gay man’s tragic story.
Mallory Maddox is buried under seven years of writer’s block. With her status as a literary sensation fizzling, she’ll do anything she can to resurrect her career. Inspiration needs to strike—and fast.
Enter Leo. He’s a struggling addict sleeping under bridges and trading sex for survival. He’s vulnerable. He’s enigmatic. He’s exactly what Mallory has been looking for.
Mallory needs Leo if she wants another bestseller. The world needs Leo’s story right now, and Mallory believes she deserves to tell it. Really, it’s her story—she’s the one who wrote it, after all.
But as secrets threaten to unravel more than just her career, Mallory must decide how far she will go to pen the perfect story.
A razor-sharp satirical thriller, Fruit Fly will appeal to fans of R. F. Kuang’s Yellowface and Yomi Adegoke’s The List.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This wickedly satirical novel takes an unforgiving look at how queer trauma is fetishized and commodified. Mallory is an author whose literary success is fading fast. Desperate for an idea, she downloads a gay dating app and finds Leo, a young, gay poet wrestling with homelessness and addiction. Far too easily, Mallory is able to convince herself that there’s nothing wrong with turning Leo’s brutal, ongoing story into her next novel. And so Fruit Fly unfold in sharply unflattering detail, with the wealthy, privileged Mallory stalking Leo and mining his misery for content as he slides further and further into desperation. Josh Silver isn’t afraid to bring out the ugliest flaws in all his characters, even Mallory’s network executive husband (whose domineering rage is downright terrifying). It all makes for both a page-turning read and a brilliant commentary on how much a story is worth—and who gets paid for it.
