Bibliograph

Type

Label

Fruit of the dead, a novel, Rachel Lyon

Language

eng

Index

no index present

Literary Form

novels

Main title

Fruit of the dead

Oclc number

1384414017

Responsibility statement

Rachel Lyon

Sub title

a novel

Summary

An electric contemporary reimagining of the myth of Persephone and Demeter set over the course of one summer on a lush private island, about addiction and sex, family and 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 in New York, is no longer sure where home is when the father of one of her campers offers an alternative. The CEO of a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company, Rolo Picazo is middle-aged, divorced, magnetic. He is also intoxicated by Cory. When Rolo proffers a childcare job (and an NDA), Cory quiets an internal warning and allows herself to be ferried to his private island. Plied with luxury and opiates manufactured by his company, she continues to tell 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 she alone is convinced she hears. 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 ecstatic novel that vibrates with lush abandon. Readers will not soon forget it

Table Of Contents

A snare for the bloom-like girl -- The wide-pathed earth yawned there in the plain -- The sea's salt swell laughed for joy -- I sped, like wild-bird, over firm land and yielding sea -- And the heights of the mountains and the depths of the sea rang with her voice -- Tell me truly of my dear child if you have seen her anywhere -- But no one heard her voice, nor yet the olive-trees -- Strange woman, I went out wasting with yearning -- And she yet beheld earth and starry heaven, and the strong-flower sea where fishes shoal, and still hoped to see her mother -- Disfigured by grief terrible and savage, I sat near the wayside like an ancient woman -- From the misty gloom, in his house upon a couch, his shy mate, much reluctant, yearned for her mother -- Go now, he urged, to your dark-robed mother, go, and feel kindly in your heart toward me; while you are here, you shall rule all that lives and moves, queen of the land of sweet and sea-girt

Target audience

adult

Classification