Book: Fruit of the Dead
Author: Rachel Lyon
Publisher: Scribner
Year: 2024
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “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 ozone of her campers offers and alternative. The CEO of a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company, Rolo Picazo is middle-aged, divorced, magnetic. He is also intuited boy Cory. When Rolo proffers a childcare job (and an NDA), Cory diets and internal warning and allows herself to be ferried to his private island. Plied with luxury and opiates manufactured by his company, she tires to assure herself she’s in charge. Her mother, Emer, head of a teetering agricultural NGO, senses otherwise. With her daughter seemingly vanished, Ever crosses land and sea to heed a cry fro help that only she can hear.
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 electric novel that readers will not soon forget.”

Review : I was a little skeptical about Fruit of the Dead at first, feeling as though I was about to walk onto Jeffrey Epstein’s island with the back-cover synopsis, not so much a modernized retelling of Persephone’s descent into the underworld and Demeter’s journey to retrieve her. Oh, how wrong I was. Rachel Lyon has spun a masterful tale of persuasion, adoration, and tragedy; a poignant retelling and perfect stand-alone novel. Lyon has completely grasped the fever dream of drug use in such a way that left me feeling dizzy and unmoored as I read Cory’s descent into addiction – a powerful parallel to Persephone’s own descent.

Lyon brings Cory into alignment with Persephone, goddess of both spring and the Underworld, quickly and with ease, as she gets to know Rolo Picazo, her new employer. As the CEO of a big pharma corporation, he has access to medications, drugs, opiates that have not yet been granted FDA approval, most notably a small, gel coated, gleaming red pill called Granadone, Grannies for short. A perfect, ripe, shining pomegranate seed, the demise of Persephone herself. Picazo shares a drink recipe with Cory, a mixture of vodka, pomegranate juice, lime, and, you guessed it, the contents of a Granny; called? Fruit of the Dead. And with her first sip, not even 100 pages in, Cory is snared.

After having been camp counselor to Picazo’s seven year old son, becoming a live-in nanny for his son and slightly younger daughter is easy as can be. Plied with as much alcohol and Grannies as she wants, Cory finds Picazo’s island intocicating. And while Picazo himself (middle aged, bloated, sad) is intriguing to her, she only finds herself (eighteen, unsteady, uncertain) mildly attracted to him in ever-so-brief moments that feel more like the intrigue of someone who grew up without a father. Meanwhile, Picazo expresses clear interest in being both a father figure as well as a romantic partner to Cory right off the bat. And like all master manipulators, he removes his mask and reveals himself nearly immediately, declaring himself a narcissist and reading Cory for the perfect victim she, in fact, is. And like most victims, Cory brushes it all aside, looks beneath the lumpy exterior, and attempts to see the good within. All whilst sinking further and further into a fever dream of addiction and loss of control.

This seems as good a point as any to talk about some content warnings, because, believe me, this book is a walking content warning. Not only does the entire book revolve around the explicit experience and physical sensation of being high and / or drunk, it also speaks in detail about sexual assault, physical assault, and the trauma that results from both. This book is not for the faint of heart, nor should it be read lightly. And while it is written with breathtaking prose, if you do decide to read it, please be careful and gentle with yourself if any of the above are problematic for you.

Bouncing back and forth between an elder teen who does not yet know who she is, who has been the victim of sexual assault and has entirely lost herself because of it, who is then scooped up by a predator and fed mouthfuls of little red happy pills; and a devastated mother who begins to unravel and become feral when she cannot get in touch with her daughter, Fruit of the Dead is nothing short of a masterpiece. We not only glimpse behind the curtain of a well curated mother, a woman who manages an NGO, who hobnobs with google executives, who pulls a few strings and gets her daughter prized internship after internship, who works her magic and lands Cory a scholarship to an all girls private school in Manhattan, we are privy to her downward spiral into mania as she loses herself in the search for her missing daughter. While we find Cory grasping at the very idea of her own identity, we see Emer, Cory’s mother, whose identity no longer fits, a mask that slips, falls, and shatters. The two are wrapped together, entangled in a connection neither can escape.

As a true retelling of Demeter and Persephone, the book does not end with a neat little bow tied on it. After all, Persephone returns to the underworld once every six months, leaving our world to the decay of autumn and the darkness of winter. I won’t completely spoil the book for you, but just know that this is not a happy ending. It is a realistic ending. And for that I am profoundly grateful. A perfect, feral, fever dream of a book.

Advice : I encourage you to read my content warning before deciding if this book is for you. If, however, you read the warning and feel okay with the content, I think you should run as fast as you can to your nearest bookstore on March 5th, 2024 and buy a copy of this book.