On the HahaFiction shelf
Fruit Fly
Audiobook available · 13 hr 4 min
Seven years after her hit novel, Mallory Maddox still needs a follow-up. She finds material in Leo, a young gay man dealing with addiction and homelessness, and begins appropriating his experiences for her next bestseller. Her literary ambition puts an already vulnerable man in greater danger.
From the publisher’s blurb
“Go gay. Go sad. Go dark.”Read the full description at Crooked Lane Books publisher description
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What makes it funny?
Mallory hides in the bathroom at her own expensive party to play Candy Crush. When she ventures onto Grindr, she invokes Virginia Woolf. These early scenes make her literary self-image hard to square with her behavior.
The comedy at work
Mallory can describe taking someone else’s life story as a writer’s duty. The satire also reaches the business around her: suffering has value when it can be packaged as an authentic story and sold. Her self-justifications make that transaction uglier and funnier.
Try this if…
A taste for publishing satire and morally compromised protagonists matters here. The domestic-thriller plot gives the attacks on literary ambition a setting of exploitation and escalating danger.
Good to know
Leo’s circumstances include addiction, homelessness and sex for survival. A controlling husband and mounting danger also feature in the setup; the jokes accompany substantial distress.
A few distinguishing details
- A blocked novelist treating another person’s hardship as her comeback
- Virginia Woolf invoked during an excursion onto Grindr
More funny contemporary & literary
Sources & further reading
- Apple Books
Book information
- Kirkus review
Review
- UK publisher
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