Hot Fruit: An Otherwordly Short Story Collection

I was looking through NetGalley for a new book I could read before release, a tantalising short book with, perhaps, four existing reviews or so that I could check out and feel special for getting in on early (such is the great pleasure of it), and I spotted Erinrose Mager's Hot Fruit - a poetry collection (or... story collection, I suppose the cover does say 'stories') with that appealing, visceral title and a gorgeously muddy painting adorning the cover.

Yummy.

This could be weird, I thought. The muddy colours and the fruit theme evoke that visceral style I often love in poetry. What I discovered was that this is a prose poem collection, essentially, and that really interests me because it sort of bridges the gap between poetry and prose in a really neat way. It doesn't feel quite the way a short story collection usually would. Its eye for the poetic is too strong, its taste for the sensorial details too prominent, to enter the more rigidly structured, more grounded world of what I think of as a typical book of short stories.

Yet its prosaic style also lends it a certain straightforwardness. There is something direct about the prose poem that complements the lavish descriptive wandering of the poet's mind. But I suppose at some point we're splitting hairs. Where and when does a poem become a short story, or vice versa? This is an interesting question to ask, and I don't quite know the answer. Somewhere, they must meet and become one.

A very cute picture of the author, from her website.

There is a throughline to these stories. They explore themes of disconnection, the alienation that can come with adoption, strange familial fissures, and the unbelievable and meticulous pleasure of good food. They all manage a synchronicity between satisfying directness and a murky, faraway feeling. The fable is often invoked. There is a sense of humour that creeps in, and a sometimes diaristic tone to these stories. I liked this passage from a story titled Excellent Nature:

Some might say I cannot live without assurances that I garner from patient men who have tragically lost their mothers. But I am patient. I am the patient one. Look at me! I am a highly skilled person, and my lover is interested in purchasing drones.

I also liked the opening of a story titled Joon-Ho:

My father is always away, directing movies to great acclaim.

Bong Joon-Ho, in case you have forgotten.

And, finally, I loved this passage, which makes up one of many tiny interstitial stories all titled True Fable:

Here, the spouses double-cleanse their moon faces, apply their toners, their essences, their ampoules, their serums, their sheet masks, their eye creams, and their moisturizers, slip from their bathrooms, drift down the steps of their basements while their partners sleep, and chip away at their earthen floors with bone spoons, little by little, to expose the planet's molten core from which the spouses harvest magma, turned in air to obsidian, for their hair treatments, and for their weapons.

It's just so evocative and beautifully weird, and a little bit funny. A touch of The Stepford Wives about it. There's something undeniably satisfying in the sensorially rich descriptions and some of the odder, more surreal scenarios that make up this collection.

A very special debut. And one that makes me want to read about a million more short stories.

Four delicious lemon slices out of five.

★★★★☆

P. S. I highly recommend this gorgeous review of the book from this person. Absolutely delicious.