Fruit Fly, by JOSH SILVER, is a new contemporary fiction where a washed-up author will stop at nothing to claw her way back to relevancy – even if it means appropriating a young gay man’s tragic story.

Read on for an extract

ABOUT THE BOOK

Mallory Maddox is buried under seven years of writer’s block. With her status as a literary sensation fizzling, she’ll do anything she can to resurrect her career. Inspiration needs to strike—and fast.

Enter Leo. He’s a struggling addict sleeping under bridges and trading sex for survival. He’s vulnerable. He’s enigmatic. He’s exactly what Mallory has been looking for.

Mallory needs Leo if she wants another bestseller. The world needs Leo’s story right now, and Mallory believes she deserves to tell it. Really, it’s her story—she’s the one who wrote it, after all.

But as secrets threaten to unravel more than just her career, Mallory must decide how far she will go to pen the perfect story.

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EXTRACT

Mallory

As I start up my sixth game of Candy Crush while sat on the closed toilet seat, I have a very clear and rational realisation. I, too, am a piece of exploding computerised fruit.

That is the extent of me. Here one moment, only to be pulverised into a spray of sweet nothing the very next. Obliterated. Forgotten.

Outside, I can hear the voices of my guests and the music droning on. Why won’t they leave?

The truth is, if I did explode, I don’t think they’d notice. At least not at first. They would pretend that they cared – at my funeral. That I was important to them. That I had made a mark on their lives in some beautiful and profound way. But they would lie.

One of them lied earlier. A woman I have met only once.

‘Mallory is basically Clarissa Dalloway,’ she proclaimed loudly to my kitchen full of arty (pretentious) intellectual types, pointing in my direction with a mouthful of hummus. Hummus I had bought from Tesco and put in the poshest-looking bowl I could find. I’d sprinkled some coriander on top and pretended I’d made it. (I suppose I lie too. But it’s different.) ‘Clarissa Fucking Dalloway,’ she repeated, whilst pulling a face like the mouthful was precipitating an orgasm. I swallowed my jealousy. I haven’t had an orgasm in years, let alone one triggered by Tesco’s ownbrand hummus.

‘Mallory throws the best parties in North London.’ Today is the first time this woman has stepped foot inside my house.

But I laughed obligingly. And the guests all agreed, crowded round my kitchen island, nodding, a bobbing sea of wire-rimmed glasses, trilbies, rolled up cigarettes tucked behind ears (lobes studded with hoops and dangling crosses). Everyone defying the vape trend because they are too real, too hardcore and altogether too brilliant to care about lung cancer, like their Tate Modern memberships and Birkenstocks somehow make them immune.

Some even clapped. I waved them off, like they were being silly. No, no. I am nothing like Mrs Dalloway. But I wouldn’t actually know. I have never read Mrs Dalloway, despite pretending to be well-versed in the literary greats so often that I’ve almost convinced myself I have. What is actually true is that I googled the synopsis – like I do with most of the classics – binged on an overview of the themes and style on Wikipedia, mentally crammed in some sentences that sounded important and now just recite them at people. It seems to have worked. I can even quote bits.

She sliced like a knife through everything.

That’s a good one.

‘Mal?’

I move my finger across my screen with utter precision, slaying five yellow Jelly Tots in a row. I watch them detonate, the vibrations of my phone tingle my fingers in such a satisfying rhythm that I make an audible gasp.

‘Mal, are you in there?’

I do have to be careful. Virginia Woolf comes up annoyingly often within the conversations of this wannabe Bloomsbury set, like she has been adopted as some kind of Mother Figure (she’s a style icon, a homeware influencer, just a total fucking mood).

And so, I bought an early edition of Mrs Dalloway from eBay for more than the price of an iPad, bent the pages and put it in the downstairs bathroom – where I am currently sat. It is placed for everyone to see: right on top of the pile of neatly (strategically) arranged books on the shelf, next to the peace lily and the bougie scented candle that smells strongly like lavender, perfectly masking the stench of my deception.

You’d think I’d just read the thing.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Josh Silver is the author of HappyHead, which was shortlisted for the YA Book Prize and nominated for the Carnegie Medal, its sequel, Dead Happy, and Erase Me. His experience working with teenagers as a mental health nurse inspired the critically acclaimed duology.

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Visit the publisher’s website here.