Fruit Fly by Josh Silver
Magpie Books
On the cover of Josh Silver’s latest novel, a fruit fly perches on a relatively enormous orange, reminding us that even the smallest beings can have profound significance.
Mallory Maddox has a perfect life – a perfect house she designed in minute detail, a perfect husband who has just got a promotion, and the Sunday Times Best Seller Shallow Embers.
However, at 36 years of age, Mallory is depressed about her barren life. She doesn’t want to have the baby her husband is pressuring her to have and, seven years after her best-selling novel, Mallory has severe writer’s block.
In a darkly funny twist, Mallory drunkly Googles ‘how to write a best seller’ one night. It instructs her to ‘Go Gay, Go Sad and Go Dark’. In a roundabout way, with a series of hilarious misunderstandings, Mallory ends the night with having joined Grindr and meeting Leo.
Leo is gay, a 22 year-old struggling addict who trades sex for money and money for drugs. Author Josh Silver, who is now a mental health nurse working with teenagers, has said that he struggled a lot with addiction and having to hide parts of himself from a world that didn’t fully accept who he was.
Mallory had completed an on-line counselling course and, through a loophole, has been practicing as a therapist. Part of her feels that she can help Leo, but a larger part is that she is inspired and excited by his story, and she starts writing a new novel.
As Leo takes Mallory deep into his desperate lifestyle, the cracks in Mallory’s life are opening up into huge chasms that she has to navigate to keep her facade. Leo and Mallory are similar in many ways. Although their situations are entirely different, they are alone – both fighting a world that is stopping them from moving forward.
Alternating the narrative from Mallory to Leo allows the reader to sympathise with both characters, and ultimately question the ethics of who is allowed to tell Leo’s story.
Lezly Herbert
