Bad Fruit
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- 6,99 €
Publisher Description
EVERY FAMILY HAS ITS SECRETS . . .
‘A beautiful, bewitching, unsettling and unputdownable dream of a book . . . .I genuinely loved this, it will stay with me for a long time’ LISA JEWELL
‘A blistering thriller’ NEW YORK TIMES
‘Impossible to put down’ CHRIS WHITAKER
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Seventeen-year-old Lily has a loving, normal family. So why does it suddenly feel like secrets are stirring? Like Mama is about to crack?
As a storm of memories builds over one stifling summer, Lily must recast everything. What if her house isn’t a home – but a prison? What if her mother isn’t a protector – but a monster . . .
Bold, beautifully told, and bound to keep you turning this pages, this is an unforgettable story about a family gone bad . . .
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Readers love getting a taste of BAD FRUIT:
‘Best book I have read in a long long time. Intelligently written, really well paced. I devoured this’ Reader review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
‘A powerful, hard-hitting and exquisitely written novel’ CLARE MACKINTOSH
‘Paring-knife sharp . . . Mama is a terrifying, masterful creation’ ABIGAIL DEAN
‘I devoured this, was completely gripped. Beautiful, astounding for a debut novel’ Reader review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
‘This is a cracker’ HARRIET TYCE
‘Disturbing, poignant and memorable all at once’ OBSERVER
‘A riveting novel exploring how family ties can both make us and break us’ RED
‘Beautifully captures your imagination from start to finish’ Reader review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
‘Beautiful, disturbing, impossible to put down. Bad Fruit heralds a seriously impressive new talent in Ella King’ CHRIS WHITAKER
‘Masterful in its evocation of the complexity of mother-daughter relationships . . . a writer to watch’ HARPER’S BAZAAR
About the author
Ella King is a Singaporean novelist living in London. She read Philosophy and Theology at Oxford University and is a corporate lawyer. A graduate of Faber Academy’s novel-writing programme, she won the Blue Pencil Pitch Prize 2019 and came third in the Aurora Prize for Short Fiction 2019. She was inspired to write Bad Fruit by the stories her grandmother told her and her volunteer work with anti-human trafficking and domestic violence charities.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
King delves into toxic family ties and intergenerational trauma in her hypnotic debut. As a summer heat wave blankets London, the already thin emotional boundary between 18-year-old Lily and her mother, May, dissolves further when Lily's mind is flooded with images of a shattered glass of milk and a crumpled woman. After a doctor says they aren't hallucinations but flashbacks, Lily believes the visions are her mother's memories of abuse. Lily, who grew up with stories of May's Peranakan Chinese heritage and childhood in Singapore, bends to May's every whim, such as tasting the partly spoiled orange juice May prefers before serving it to her, and always wearing pink, May's favorite color. Lily even goes so far as to wear makeup with yellow undertones and colored contacts to hide her eyes ("white devil eyes," May calls them, convinced Lily's British father is having an affair). Not long after the flashbacks start, Lily meets Lewis, a 30-something lecturer at Oxford. A former teenage runaway from a difficult home, Lewis picks up on Lily's struggle and promises to help her get to the bottom of her flashbacks. As May's manipulative behavior escalates and Lily seeks out the truth behind the flashbacks, King rachets up the tension in this perfect blend of psychological thriller and coming-of-age. This author is off to a great start.
