Bad Fruit

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IF YOU HAVE A DIFFICULT RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR MOTHER OR FATHER OR BOTH, CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED. If you don't have the coping mechanisms to deal with being #triggered by family abuse, don't self-harm by forcing yourself to read this. Mental health >>>>>> We meet Lily in the summer just before she’s due to start university, she’s secured a place at Oxford – her future looks bright. She lives with her parents in Greenwich, South-East London and has two older siblings: a sister, Julia and a brother, Jacob. Debut author King skillfully brings to light the layered, deeply complex machinations that lurk below the surface in families and confer the fragile impression of normalcy; this family’s crosshairs of obligation, love, and resentment, too, are never oversimplified. May is especially captivating: a veritable tyrant who’s also full of sympathetic, deeply human insecurities. […] Layered, variable, and, like spoiled orange juice, sometimes complicatedly bitter.” Another really engaging thread to this book is Lily’s interest in etymology. As a parallel to exploring her own roots, Lily’s love of the origin of language is woven throughout by giving us lovely descriptions like this: 'The Latin root for ‘hallucinate’ is irresistibly beautiful, alucinari, something you would name a Victorian child.'

Just graduated from high school and waiting to start college at Oxford, Lily lives under the scrutiny of her volatile Singaporean mother, May, and is unable to find kinship with her elusive British father, Charlie. When May suspects that Charlie is having an affair, there’s only one thing that calms May down: a glass of perfectly spoiled orange juice served by Lily, who must always taste it first to make sure it’s just right.Mesmerizing, dream-like and darkly suspenseful, Bad Fruit captures the damaging love and loyalty that children can bear towards abusive parents who are suffering from and passing on their complex trauma.”

I don't know, I just feel like I should have felt something tugging at my heartstrings and I didn't. I just could not get immersed in this story no matter how sharp the actual writing was. I know her mother experienced horrific abuse but I'm not a believer in that being any justification for abusing her own children but I say that as someone who grew up with loving and supporting parents. What do I know? On this subject, thankfully, very little. The story is dense but not completely dark. It’s lightened by Lily’s engaging character and the author’s unique writing style. It was a pleasure to read fresh and sophisticated wording and my literary appreciation was balanced with the weighty subject matter. true that the mother-daughter relationship was nuanced, as were the main character's other relationships, and the author excels at writing the duality and complexity of their dynamics. yet, it still did not pull me into the story. i was not invested at all, which was probably why i was able to fall asleep three times. really, i don't have anything particularly bad to say about the book because i was simply bored. it just didn't do it for me.Such an impressively written psychological and literary plot to me— the twisted element in its conflicts were so darkly addictive that I think this would be the most damaged group of characters could ever existed in a plot. Interesting on how the ‘bad fruit’ that specifically related to spoiled orange juice in this story could represents the unpleasant ‘acidity’ of its character’s relationships as well. 4 stars to this! King is unflinching as she examines the hard questions about family. What defines belonging? Looks, care,secrets? How do you understand someone who loves you and hurts you? In Bad Fruit, guilt, hate, and love mingle powerfully.” OOHHWEEE my therapist is gonna get an earful when I see her next. I don't want to reveal too much about my family life—I mean I'm wearing a ski mask in my profile pic so that should give you an idea of my desire to be incognito—but this particular story was difficile to get through. A disturbing mother and daughter relationship; a family overflowing with secrets. Bad Fruit is dark, compelling and beautifully written”