Irish writer and zine producer Sarah Maria Griffin (Spare and Found Parts; Other Words for Smoke) shocks and fascinates in Eat the Ones You Love, a queer love story that turns into horror sci-fi.
Thirty-something Shell Pine's life is at a standstill. She's lost her job as a graphic designer, left her longtime partner, and moved into her parents' house in a Dublin suburb. After spotting a "Help Needed" sign outside of a flower shop in a nearby past-its-prime mall, Shell gets a job as a florist's assistant, desperate to prove she's found a new direction for her life. But that new direction proves to be less the flowers she tends than the florist she tends them for: the beautiful and frazzled Neve.
But Neve's talent for plants harbors a dark secret. An unusual orchid called Baby grows inside Neve's shop and has already entangled her in his murderous web. But while Baby bides his time devouring bystanders to help him grow, it is Neve he truly wants to consume, as well as the women in Neve's life, like Shell, who keep getting in his way.
Set in the familiar half-abandoned landscape of commercial retail, Eat the Ones You Love is firmly rooted in a desperate desire to consume, made more unquenchable by its increasingly amorphous form. Griffin viscerally depicts the engorged, grotesque version of Baby's hunger, luxuriating with him in his post-murderous state. Mesmerized by this pulsing, insatiable want, all readers of Griffin's absorbing prose can do is watch as Baby and the people around him gorge themselves until they split at the seams. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor