Camp counsellor Cory Ansel, eighteen and aimless, afraid to face her highly 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 off the coast of Maine. 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. When her daughter seemingly disappears, Emer crosses land and sea to heed a cry for help she alone is convinced she hears.

Alternating between the two women’s perspectives, Fruit of the Dead incorporates its mythic inspiration with a light touch and devastating precision. The result is a lush and haunting story that explores love, attraction, control, obliteration and America’s own late capitalist mythos.

Her hunger is violent. One last bite, she bargains with it, then bargains again: Two last bites.

Fruit of the Dead is THE book of the summer. Hands down. Ancient Greece meets Succession in this electric contemporary reimagining of the myth of Persephone and Demeter, and of course, Hades. It is a trippy, coming-of-age exploration of who holds in the power in the modern underworld. It is basically if A24 did a mondern retelling of this myth, which is the highest compliment.

It is gritty, beautifully-written, richly atmospheric. I was both repulsed and consumed by it as Lyon explores wealth, excess, addiction, toxic relationships, famine, big pharma, the opioid epidemic. Rolo’s secluded island mansion also had real unsettling Epstein vibes.

The characters are utterly compelling modern day realisations of their mythical counterparts. Cory, for all her eye-roll inducing life decisions, perfectly captures the reckless chaos and naïveté of girlhood. While the constant call backs to her pink hair did get annoying (we get, girl, you’re Persephone!), there were moments where I was reminded of my own innocence and impulsivity, which usually ends in me sobbing to my mother afterwards so my heart bled for her. Our billionaire Hades, Rolo, is the right level of icky yet intoxicating – the sleaze was oozing off the page! He’s intimidating yet he’s also pathetic. Emer, our Demeter, was headstrong and obsessive – I LOVED her. I’m a sucker for complex mother-daughter relationships (aren’t we all!) and how far mothers will go to protect their babies. I enjoyed how Lyon explored the idea of the invisible thread that links you together after birth and seeing that realised in the ending.

I do wish the ending had a bit more oomph, especially after all Emer had been through to get Cory back from Rolo. I would have liked to see her go full mama bear and deliver an onslaught of rage and fury. You can feel the heightened emotions in Fruit of the Dead‘s ending but it’s also very contained. A quiet anger. A sudden conclusion. It’s emotionally charged but also flat, which was a wee bit dissatisfying and left me with more questions than answers regarding certian plot points. I wanted the mystery of Kelly to unravel a bit further beyond the tree, prod the beast that is Rolo a bit more and let Emer fuck him up and burn it all down. That was probably unrealistic, I know, but it would have been a fulfilling end to such a magnificently carved out retelling.

The real star of the show and a major part in why this retelling works is Lyon’s writing. I usually loathe the lack of quotation marks in novels and the structure was not what I was expecting, however, it really worked to give Fruit of the Dead a real poeticism that I think Lyon wanted to achieve. Her prose is crip, visceral and as addictive as Rolo’s Granadone pills. Despite very little action throughout, there’s a palpable undercurrent of tension that bubbles beneath the surface throughout the entire novel. We see snippets of Rolo’s fiery anger and eagerness to claim what he believes is rightfully his. Also, as a former Classics student, I was living for all the Greek myth Easter eggs!

I’m obsessed with Fruit of the Dead. The cover is art. The way Lyon handled this myth and brought it life for a modern audience is just *chefs kiss*. I do have some notes on the ending but, overall, this book is incredible and I will not shut about it!! Fruit of the Dead has, in an instant, claimed the title of my favourite book of 2024 so far and I can see it retaining that crown for a while…

RATING

★★★★★