Fruit of the Dead

October 1, 2023

In this retelling of the myth of Persephone and Demeter, disaffected 18-year-old camp counselor Cory Ansel is offered a childcare job (complete with a nondisclosure agreement) by the father of one of her campers, a wealthy CEO who's besotted with her. Living on his private island, Cory tries to ignore her misgivings, but not so Cory's mother, head of an agricultural NGO, who is determined to track her down. From the author of Self-Portrait with Boy, a finalist for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. Prepub Alert.

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Starred review from January 22, 2024
Lyon (Self-Portrait with Boy) puts a modern twist on the myth of Persephone and Demeter in this irresistible narrative of a naive teenager and her protective mother. Cory is an 18-year-old camp counselor and recent high school graduate with no plans for college when she meets pharmaceutical company CEO Rolo Picazo, the slick and wealthy parent of a young camper named Spenser, and accepts his offer to work as a nanny after camp is over. Dazzled by the $20,000 starting salary and promises of “advancement,” Cory ignores a red flag involving news of the company’s controversial new opiate, which is drowning in litigation due to overdoses. After she joins Rolo on his remote private island in an unspecified ocean (on the way, Cory calls her mother, Emer, with the news of her new job and living situation, and says she’s unclear on the geography), the nanny arrangement takes on a sinister cast as Cory learns that one of her predecessors has mysteriously vanished. There’s also an unnerving absence of Wi-Fi, and Emer grows increasingly worried as Cory remains unreachable. Eventually, Emer embarks on a search and rescue mission to save her “distractible, undisciplined” daughter from Rolo’s sinister clutches. The story is brilliantly told through Cory’s and Emer’s alternating perspectives, as Lyon volleys from vibrant third-person narration focused on the teenager to her mother’s frantic first-person inner monologue. The result is an affecting, engrossing, and resonant tale about lost innocence and the enduring bond between a mother and daughter. Agent: Meredith Kaffel Simonoff, Gernert Co.

Starred review from January 1, 2024
A young woman gets caught in the orbit of a wealthy, suspicious executive in this contemporary retelling of the Persephone and Demeter myth. Cory Ansel, freshly 18, returns to River Rock, the summer camp of her youth, to work as a counselor after graduating high school without being accepted to a single college. On the last night of camp, she meets Rolo Picazo, father of one of her campers and CEO of Southgate Pharmaceuticals, whose "highly effective, highly popular, highly pleasant, highly safe, frankly groundbreaking painkiller" is now the subject of a damning investigation. Smooth-talking Rolo offers Cory $20,000 to be his children's temporary nanny on his private island. Once Cory arrives on Little �le des Bienheureux, the unsettling events that readers will surely anticipate by now begin to rack up--the other staff confuse her with Kelly, the former babysitter who "went away"; her employer, when he's around, is alternately indulgent and cruel; and there's no cell service. Third-person chapters describing Cory's increasingly perilous adventure alternate with first-person chapters narrated by Cory's furious and deliriously worried mother, Emer. With a professional crisis of her own imminent and her child seemingly vanished, Emer sets off on a daunting quest to track down her daughter. Cory, described by her mother as "arrogant, beautiful, and dumb," is so painfully na�ve that readers should be forgiven for their inevitable frustrations with her, and yet Lyon's skillful and luscious prose encourages empathy for both Cory and Emer. The book gets to the visceral heart of Cory's broken spirit, her fractured relationship with her mother, and the love that binds them together despite everything. Readers need not be overly familiar with the myth to enjoy the well-told story. An affecting novel with touches of the fantastical, weaving explorations of power, youth, wealth, and familial love.

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Starred review from February 15, 2024
Lyon's second novel, following Self-Portrait with Boy (2018), is a retelling of the story of Demeter and Persephone shaped for the opioid-crisis era. As her post-graduation stint as a camp counselor comes to an end, 18-year-old Cory dreads returning home to New York and her disappointed single mother, Emer. When Rolo, a divorced pharmaceutical executive and father of one of the campers, offers Cory a job as his children's nanny, she accepts in spite of the conditions--an NDA and no internet access. Whisked away to the family's secluded private island and plied with the company's controversial flagship drug, Cory vacillates between independence and unease as she learns more about her dangerously charismatic employer. Meanwhile, Emer, head of an agricultural NGO in duress, drops everything in a desperate attempt to find her daughter. In lush, hallucinatory prose, Lyon narrates from the perspectives of both mother and daughter and evokes the classic myth without distracting readers from the striking contemporary setting and subject matter. Recommend to fans of Jesmyn Ward and Celeste Ng.

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