Reviews with content warning for Animal death - Fruiting Bodies: Stories

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Fruiting Bodies: Stories by Kathryn Harlan

7 reviews

yinflower's review

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dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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rorikae's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

'Fruiting Bodies' by Kathryn Harlan is an introspective short story collection with fabulist elements that delves deeply into its characters. Each story allows Harlan to explore a unique character, often with a fabulist and queer lens. I found each of these stories deeply moving and immersive though a few definitely stood out. My favorites included "Hunting the Viper King" about a girl who is whisked away on her father's travels trying to find a great mythical snake and "Is This You?" about a woman who has different versions of herself appear on her doorstep each time her mother writes a new essay about her troubled childhood. There aren't a great number of stories in this collection because Harlan takes time with each of them so that by the end of each story, I felt as if I knew these characters. There is a precision in her writing that cuts deep. These stories are laced with deep emotions and hard experiences that cut to their characters' flaws. At times, I hoped for more speculative elements but I don't think they were necessary. These are stories deeply rooted in their characters where the fabulism is just the lightest sprinkling to put in relief the character's decisions and flaws. Like salt on a chocolate chip cookie. This is such a fantastic collection and I cannot wait to read more of Harlan's work and potentially see how much more heartache they can bring with a full novel.

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bookishsapphicshay's review

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dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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ceallaighsbooks's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“In the night, dead fish had floated to the surface of the lake. There must have been hundreds of them, all drifting near the shoreline. Their bodies lying together, intimately, flank to flank, open eye against open eye. The waves brought them toward us in a scum of silver corpses… We watched the fish wash in, hesitating like driftwood in the shallows, inching farther and farther up the beach. Each wave slid flesh against flesh, bringing them together and apart in little sighs, only to spit a couple soft, silvery bodies onto the sand, and drag the rest back without them. "Look at that," my grandmother said, and I nodded. It looked like nothing I had words for, like the end of the world.” — from “Algal Bloom”

TITLE—Fruiting Bodies

AUTHOR—Kathryn Harlan

PUBLISHED—2022

PUBLISHER—WW Norton & Company

GENRE—short stories: literary, speculative fiction

SETTING—our world & others

MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—poisoned water, algae & fungi & mushrooms, girlhood, creepy kids, summer vacation, legends & lore, tarot cards, mythical realities, family dynamics & relationships, adoption, fairies & changelings, fieldwork & archival research, queer realities, entomology & parasites, fairy- & folk-tales, f/f relationships, climate change, coming-of-age themes, creature love, forest house, childhood trauma, poss. mother with MBP disorder, finding yourself in the books you read, in other people’s stories, and in the heroes you choose

WRITING STYLE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

CHARACTERS—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

STORIES—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

BONUS ELEMENT/S—Given the particular themes, subjects, and writing style of this book I guess it was inevitable that this would be a *perfect* read for me.

PHILOSOPHY—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“Dorothy has never dreamed the colors of the Viper-King. The inside of its mouth is pink, bodily, more fearsome than if it had been red. Animals in fairy tales have red maws, like shed blood. Wolves that eat up children, and dragons that rise from caverns, these things are red all the way down. They hardly have organs, or stomachs, or throats. Real animals have these things, have intestines and kidneys and fat. Real animals have mouths of infected pink.” —from “The Viper King”

My thoughts:

This is one of the few books that has actually left me just a littleee tingly with jealousy that I didn’t write these stories. 😂 There wasn’t one I didn’t like. Reading each story was like unwrapping a precious, highly-anticipated treasure, trying not to rush the experience so as not to miss a single, exquisite detail. Lots of queer love, lots of body horror, lots of dark dark themes, and the *writing*. This was a five-star read based on the writing style alone. A front-runner for best read of 2023 for me.

I think my favorite story was “Fiddler, Fool Pair” but “Take Only What Belongs to You” was a very close second. The imagery in “Algal Bloom” was excellent and I loved the premise of “The Viper King”. “The Changeling” was the most disturbing of the stories for me and I thought it was really cool how “Is This You?” was told in a second person singular pov. The end of “Fruiting Bodies” was perfect and “Endangered Animals” was subtle and poignant.

I would recommend this book to readers who enjoy particularly dark and modern gothic stories—especially ones that focus on queer themes and feature strong overtones of mythical and supernatural elements.

This book is best read on a dark and stormy night, on a roadtrip, on a whim—anywhere where the liminal spaces of our worlds seem more fluid than usual…

Final note: Kathryn Harlan is a new autobuy author for me. ✌🏻

"’Listen,’ I repeated, and pointed up toward the sky, though we could see nothing there yet. ‘The crows are coming.’ And they were.” — from “Fruiting Bodies”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

CW // animal death, graphic: adopteephobia, cancer, addiction (gambling), (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)

Further Reading—

WHAT IS NOT YOURS IS NOT YOURS, by Helen Oyeyemi
THE WOMAN WHO BORROWED MEMORIES, by Tove Jansson
SALT SLOW, and OUR WIVES UNDER THE SEA, by Julia Armfield
DARK TALES, by Shirley Jackson
HAG: FORGOTTEN FOLKTALES RETOLD, edited by Carolyn Larrington
HITTING A STRAIGHT LICK WITH A CROOKED STICK, by Zora Neale Hurston
THE GOOD PEOPLE, by Hannah Kent
WHITE IS FOR WITCHING, by Helen Oyeyemi
THE SEED KEEPERS, or OLIGARCHY, by Scarlett Thomas
IN THE HOUSE IN THE DARK OF THE WOODS, by Laird Hunt
SHARP OBJECTS, by Gillian Flynn
EMILY WILDE’S ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FAERIES, by Heather Fawcett—TBR

Content Warnings

jessereadsthings's review

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dark tense medium-paced

Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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margaretpaxton's review

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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skillwithaquill's review

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emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

An absolute hidden gem. Every story in this collection packed a punch, but Fiddler and Fruiting Bodies rocked my world.

The gambling concept was wild and I can only imagine how that would play out in a full length novel.

Fruiting Bodies, the story, was far more romantic than it had any right to be. It’s a beautifully gothic twist on idyllic, sapphic cottagecore. Mushrooms that grow from a lover’s body that can both feed and poison. ♥️

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