How far would you go to write your next bestseller?
Fruit Fly follows Mallory Madox, a once-bestselling author whose creativity and career have faded over the years. Desperate to find an idea that will get her creative juices flowing again, she does the obvious modern thing: she turns to Reddit to figure out the recipe for a bestselling novel.
After reading that tragic and queer stories are “all the rage,” Mallory immediately begins her research. Her methods are questionable from the start. She takes inappropriate photos of her sleeping husband and uploads them to a Grindr account she created purely for “research.”
Then, through happenstance, Mallory meets Leo, a homeless man struggling with drug addiction and trying to find his footing. She becomes fascinated by him, first following him and eventually befriending him. But their friendship has an ulterior motive. Leo becomes the blueprint for Liam, the main character in Mallory’s new novel, as she takes details from his real life and transforms them into material for her story.
Silver raises fascinating questions about who gets to tell which stories and what responsibilities writers have when telling stories that are not their own. It’s a conversation that has become increasingly prevalent in both publishing and film, and Fruit Fly approaches it in such an interesting way.
After all, Mallory is writing a story that isn’t hers. But take one step back and there’s another layer to consider: Silver, a gay man, is writing the story of a middle-aged woman. So where do we draw the line? Who gets to write these stories? When does imagination become exploitation? And what responsibilities does an author have to the people and communities whose experiences inspire their work?
I could not put this book down. Mallory’s increasingly unhinged behaviour kept me guessing, but it was the underlying questions about authorship and the ethics of storytelling that really stayed with me.
This story not only had me gripped, but had me reading in fear of what would happen next. While Mallory and Leo are both extremely flawed, I found myself rooting for them more and more as the story progressed. I kept wondering how their story could possibly end, and Silver managed to keep me guessing right up until a finale that left me completely flabbergasted.
If you enjoyed R. F. Kuang’s Yellowface, Fruit Fly makes for a great companion read while still standing firmly on its own. Both novels invite readers to question who owns a story, who gets to tell it, and what happens when another person’s life becomes someone else’s material.
RATING: 4.75/5
