Fruit of the Dead
A Novel
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Named a Best Book of the Year by Oprah Daily
* “Mesmerizing.” —Town & Country * “Twisty and unsettling.” —People * “Ancient Greece meets Succession by way of Emma Cline…deliciously dark.” —Ruth Gilligan *
A “superb…refreshing” (The New York Times Book Review) reimagining of the myth of Persephone and Demeter set on a lush private island, exploring themes of addiction and sex, family, 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’s disappointment, is no longer sure where home is when the father of one of her campers offers an alternative. The CEO of a pharmaceutical company, Rolo Picazo is wealthy, divorced, and magnetic. He is also intoxicated by Cory. When Rolo offers her a job, Cory quiets an internal warning and allows herself to be ferried to his private island. Plied with luxury and the opiates manufactured by his company, she tells 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 that only she can hear.
Alternating between the two women’s perspectives, 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 late-capitalist mythos. Lyon’s reinvention of Persephone and Demeter’s story makes for a haunting, electric novel that readers will not soon forget.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lyon (Self-Portrait with Boy) puts a modern twist on the myth of Persephone and Demeter in this irresistible narrative of a naive teenager and her protective mother. Cory is an 18-year-old camp counselor and recent high school graduate with no plans for college when she meets pharmaceutical company CEO Rolo Picazo, the slick and wealthy parent of a young camper named Spenser, and accepts his offer to work as a nanny after camp is over. Dazzled by the $20,000 starting salary and promises of "advancement," Cory ignores a red flag involving news of the company's controversial new opiate, which is drowning in litigation due to overdoses. After she joins Rolo on his remote private island in an unspecified ocean (on the way, Cory calls her mother, Emer, with the news of her new job and living situation, and says she's unclear on the geography), the nanny arrangement takes on a sinister cast as Cory learns that one of her predecessors has mysteriously vanished. There's also an unnerving absence of Wi-Fi, and Emer grows increasingly worried as Cory remains unreachable. Eventually, Emer embarks on a search and rescue mission to save her "distractible, undisciplined" daughter from Rolo's sinister clutches. The story is brilliantly told through Cory's and Emer's alternating perspectives, as Lyon volleys from vibrant third-person narration focused on the teenager to her mother's frantic first-person inner monologue. The result is an affecting, engrossing, and resonant tale about lost innocence and the enduring bond between a mother and daughter.
