Fruiting Bodies, Kathryn Harlan
Fruiting Bodies, Kathryn Harlan
15 Rating(s)
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Fruiting Bodies
Stories

Author: Kathryn Harlan

Narrator: Heather Masters

Unabridged: 8 hr 28 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/07/2022


Synopsis

Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction - 2023
This genre-bending debut collection of stories constructs eight eerie worlds full of desire, wisdom, and magic blooming amidst decay.

In stories that beckon and haunt, Fruiting Bodies ranges confidently from the fantastical to the gothic to the uncanny as it follows characters—mostly queer, mostly women—on the precipice of change. Echoes of timeless myth and folklore reverberate through urgent narratives of discovery, appetite, and coming-of-age in a time of crisis.

In “The Changeling,” two young cousins wait in dread for a new family member to arrive, convinced that he may be a dangerous supernatural creature. In “Endangered Animals,” Jane prepares to say goodbye to her almost-love while they road-trip across a country irrevocably altered by climate change. In “Take Only What Belongs to You,” a queer woman struggles with the personal history of an author she idolized, while in “Fiddler, Fool, Pair,” an anthropologist is drawn into a magical—and dangerous—gamble. In the title story, partners Agnes and Geb feast peacefully on the mushrooms that sprout from Agnes’s body—until an unwanted male guest disturbs their cloistered home.

Audacious, striking, and wholly original, Fruiting Bodies offers stories about knowledge in a world on the verge of collapse, knowledge that alternately empowers or devastates. Pulling beautifully, brazenly, from a variety of literary traditions, Kathryn Harlan firmly establishes herself as a thrilling new voice in fiction.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Sunny

lesbian contemporary fairytales can be something so important......more

Goodreads review by Bill

Probably my favorite collection of 2022 so far. The main characters are mostly girls and young women, mostly queer, struggling to make crucial decisions in precarious situations, often with magic realist elements. In the best stories, the tension is beautifully sustained (see for example "The Change......more