Bad Fruit

July 15, 2022
A woman on the cusp of adulthood navigates a troubled relationship with her abusive mother. Among her siblings, 18-year-old Lily has always been known as their mother's undisputed favorite--"Mama's doll," the only one capable of concocting the semispoiled orange juice May favors and soothing her public meltdowns at grocery stores. Unlike her combative sister, Julia, and anxious lawyer brother, Jacob, Lily hews steadfastly to her mother's rigid expectations, even dyeing her hair dark and wearing color contacts to appear more Chinese (May is Chinese Peranakan and her husband is White). As Lily prepares to enter Oxford in the fall, she subsists on the faith that she must endure only a few weeks more of her mother's chaos before escaping. But after May accuses Lily's father of harboring a secret love for Jacob's ex-wife, Francie, her unpredictability only accelerates--precipitating a string of dramatic family showdowns, public confrontations, and other crises. Simultaneously, Lily is dogged by increasingly frequent flashbacks of some kind that pop into her consciousness, which she suspects may offer clues to her mother's tragedy-riddled childhood in Singapore (involving, hazily, a devastating fire, a car accident, and the untimely death of a family member). As the summer passes--and with the help of Lewis, a young professor and kindred spirit--Lily weighs the two selves she's come to know: the one that's been rigidly formed in her mother's image and the other whose outlines are blurrier but full of possibility. Debut author King skillfully brings to light the layered, deeply complex machinations that lurk below the surface in families and confer the fragile impression of normalcy; this family's crosshairs of obligation, love, and resentment, too, are never oversimplified. May is especially captivating: a veritable tyrant who's also full of sympathetic, deeply human insecurities. Though a few narrative elements are inelegantly constructed--Lily's flashbacks often read as a plot device--King expertly weaves a compelling family novel. Layered, variable, and, like spoiled orange juice, sometimes complicatedly bitter.

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Starred review from July 1, 2022
For as long as she can remember, Lily has been responsible for taking care of and consoling her Singaporean mother, May: consoling her after her explosive outbursts, cooking traditional Peranakan food, changing her own appearance to look more Asian, and tasting May's spoiled juice--her favorite--before serving it to her. Feeling abandoned by her two older siblings and suffocated at home, Lily bears her mother's erratic behavior and her white British father's passive responses to it with the expectation of leaving to attend Oxford University in just a few months. However, as Lily watches her mother become increasingly volatile and combative, she begins having visions of unknown memories that frighten her, leading to a terrifying understanding and a journey to reveal the deep secrets hidden within her family. What she discovers changes her perspective and her relationship with her family forever. In her debut novel, King brilliantly portrays generational abuse and trauma passed down from parent to child and a resulting, conscious fight to break free from the toxic cycle. She writes with mastery as she explores the disturbing effects of childhood trauma within a biracial family. Thrilling and suspenseful, King's exemplary novel will keep readers fascinated until the end.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

July 1, 2022
For as long as she can remember, Lily has been responsible for taking care of and consoling her Singaporean mother, May: consoling her after her explosive outbursts, cooking traditional Peranakan food, changing her own appearance to look more Asian, and tasting May's spoiled juice--her favorite--before serving it to her. Feeling abandoned by her two older siblings and suffocated at home, Lily bears her mother's erratic behavior and her white British father's passive responses to it with the expectation of leaving to attend Oxford University in just a few months. However, as Lily watches her mother become increasingly volatile and combative, she begins having visions of unknown memories that frighten her, leading to a terrifying understanding and a journey to reveal the deep secrets hidden within her family. What she discovers changes her perspective and her relationship with her family forever. In her debut novel, King brilliantly portrays generational abuse and trauma passed down from parent to child and a resulting, conscious fight to break free from the toxic cycle. She writes with mastery as she explores the disturbing effects of childhood trauma within a biracial family. Thrilling and suspenseful, King's exemplary novel will keep readers fascinated until the end.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 1, 2022
King delves into toxic family ties and intergenerational trauma in her hypnotic debut. As a summer heat wave blankets London, the already thin emotional boundary between 18-year-old Lily and her mother, May, dissolves further when Lily’s mind is flooded with images of a shattered glass of milk and a crumpled woman. After a doctor says they aren’t hallucinations but flashbacks, Lily believes the visions are her mother’s memories of abuse. Lily, who grew up with stories of May’s Peranakan Chinese heritage and childhood in Singapore, bends to May’s every whim, such as tasting the partly spoiled orange juice May prefers before serving it to her, and always wearing pink, May’s favorite color. Lily even goes so far as to wear makeup with yellow undertones and colored contacts to hide her eyes (“white devil eyes,” May calls them, convinced Lily’s British father is having an affair). Not long after the flashbacks start, Lily meets Lewis, a 30-something lecturer at Oxford. A former teenage runaway from a difficult home, Lewis picks up on Lily’s struggle and promises to help her get to the bottom of her flashbacks. As May’s manipulative behavior escalates and Lily seeks out the truth behind the flashbacks, King rachets up the tension in this perfect blend of psychological thriller and coming-of-age. This author is off to a great start.