Bad Fruit, Ella King's debut, is an emotionally devastating novel that plumbs the depths of toxic mother-daughter relationships. Lily is the high-achieving youngest daughter of a Singaporean mother, May, and a British father, Charlie, who live in London. Although May has been volatile Lily's entire life, Lily knows that no one--not her combative sister or her unstable brother--has ever been able to handle her mother the way she can. She's her mother's favorite, and she has acclimated to constantly contorting herself to make sure that remains the case. But as Lily's departure for Oxford looms, the untenable family dynamics become increasingly tense and Lily begins to experience disturbing flashbacks, ones she is sure can't be her own.
While steadfastly remaining a work of literary fiction, King's novel incorporates elements of a domestic thriller with its gradual but unsettling escalation of everyday tension. The intricate web of Lily's bond with her mother, though clearly toxic from the start, and the family's complicated relationships are perfectly captured to present a reality in which such behavior is manageable. Thus, readers are expertly drawn into Lily's increasingly fraught and strangled attempts to maintain peace, even in the most unnerving circumstances. Perhaps most impressive, though, is King's nuanced portrait of May, a woman who manages to be at once a villain and a victim, a woman smart enough to know how to use her own victimhood and vulnerable enough to still never understand the extent of her own pain. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor