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King’s characters are unbelievably complex, in ways that they don’t always understand themselves, and interactions within the family are unstable, stirring up an volatile cocktail of emotions and memories. The richness of detail and depth of understanding that King gives each character is quietly masterful. It was important to me the author is Asian because I'm TIREDT of white people only including Asian women to be petite, trophy wives to fat, rich white guys. This story is about one of the most dysfunctional and toxic families it would ever be your misfortune to meet. I devoured this Reader review A powerful, hard-hitting and exquisitely written novel CLARE MACKINTOSHParing-knife sharp .
The 'Bad Fruit' of the title is not just the referring to the mother's taste for soured juice, but giving us a metaphorical insight into the impact parenting can have on the trajectory of children's lives from generation to generation. Maria Laura is a trained dietitian, almond butter lover and food enthusiast with over seven years of experience in nutrition counseling.
This book will resonate with me for some time and I am so grateful to Emma Pickard at Harper Fiction for the opportunity to read this and provide my personal thoughts. Bad Fruit occupies that liminal space between psychological thriller and horror, beautifully written and incredibly disturbing. This is the story of Lily and the abuse she's been dealt by her neurotic and cruel Singaporean mother. During this sticky summer, Lily starts to have disturbing hallucinations or flashbacks and she has to try and work out what’s real and what’s not and if her mother has been lying about her past. Through such powerful prose, King brings a terrible sense of foreboding; through Lily’s increasing flashbacks we begin to piece together what happened in the past to cause such a devastatingly chaotic pot of simmering tension; a pot which finally just blows its lid clean off, scalding everything in its path!
A cleverly layered story of inherited trauma, a complex and damaged family dynamic, identity, trust, growth and a young woman understanding that the hardest thing she can do might just be the thing that saves her. But as home truths creep out of the shadows, Lily must recast everything: what if her house isn’t a home – but a prison?
She goes out of her way to please mama, including wearing yellow foundation to make her look more Asian and dying her hair black and preparing mama’s spoiled orange juice (yuk) although Lily has to taste it first (double yuk). It’s a very dark story, but the characters and their relationships with one another are so perfectly written that I fell head and soul into this book and read it in one sitting. Bad Fruit is at once a beautiful and harrowing novel which explores family dynamics, and tracks a journey of self-discovery. Watermelon is chock-full of antioxidants like lycopene, which is responsible for its pinkish-red color.
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