Rachel Lyon

Rachel Lyon is author of the novels Self-Portrait with Boy—a finalist for the Center for Fiction's 2018 First Novel Prize—and Fruit of the Dead. Lyon's short work has appeared in One Story, The Rumpus, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, and elsewhere. She has taught creative writing at various institutions, most recently Bennington College, and lives with her husband and two young children in Western Massachusetts.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

Fruit of the Dead came to me through researching the myth of Persephone. While in the underworld, Persephone eats six pomegranate seeds, sometimes referred to as "fruit of the dead," an act that, without her knowledge, binds her to the place for eternity. Every time I revisit the myth I'm offended on Persephone's behalf that nobody tells her, on entry, "Hey, just be aware, the food here is cursed, stay away from it," or, like, offers her any paperwork to look over, any fine print. In my book, the 18-year-old Cory, an analogue for Persephone, is given an NDA to sign, but becomes hooked on a (fictional) drug that her employer, a pharmaceutical CEO, has yet to bring to market. He describes it as, "a highly effective, highly popular, highly pleasant, highly safe, frankly groundbreaking painkiller. Greater efficacy. Fewer side effects. Longer relief. Plus, you know, between you and me, it’s a good time. Not too good. Just good enough, let’s say. Granadone is so safe we used it in a cocktail at the company Christmas party. Vodka, soda, bitters, a splash of pomegranate juice, a slice of lime. Tasty—kind of plummy—and so potent you felt like you’d transcended this earthly sphere. We called the cocktail Fruit of the Dead. I mean, come on. Irresistible, right?" So the titular phrase refers not just to the mythical seeds, but also to this fictional, drug-spiked cocktail, which Cory very much enjoys.

What's in a name?

In mythology, Persephone is also known as Kore, or "The Maiden,” so the name Cory felt like a close contemporary cousin of that moniker. I named her mother Emer for its assonance with the word Demeter. Their last name is Ansel, which is a Germanic name that has some relationship to the idea of divinity. Rolo Picazo is probably the most outlandish name in the book. He's my proxy for Hades, but his name is actually a relic of a much earlier version in the book, when it did not yet have any relationship to the myth. In that version of the book, my antagonist / romantic interest was a writer. His first name is derived from the candy, because he's seductive, a sweet-talker, if you will. I gave him the last name Picazo, which some think may be derived from the Latin "pica," or magpie, as a nod to an idea I got from my dad. My father is also a writer, but works in the realm of art history and criticism; he has a thing about magpies, who are supposed (according, apparently, to folklore alone) to be great collectors and hoarders of things, particularly bright and shiny objects. I toyed with other names for Rolo once it became clear that there was no turning back from incorporating the myth, but I kept referring to him as Rolo Picazo accidentally, so, in the end, it just felt right to leave him that way.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

I find this a really compelling question, and not just because my main protagonist is a teenager herself. I hope that my teenaged self would feel seen and respected by my treatment of this fictional teenaged girl. But I fear she'd feel embarrassed, overexposed. Cory is a vulnerable character. She makes poor decisions, lacks some self-awareness, fumbles socially, and is written intentionally as a girl with a healthy sex drive. I imagine teenaged Rachel would probably be mortified by all that. Then again, I loved lush, highly descriptive books when I was a teen—Nabokov, Gabriel García Márquez—and, in the sections written from Cory's perspective, my book does, I think, reach or at least intend to reach a similarly luxuriant, elevated register. So, if she didn't know it was written by the woman she'd someday become, maybe she'd enjoy it. I hope so.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

Oh, endings, for sure. But in this case, I think I revised the opening of the book more obsessively. I was clearer on how the book would end than I was on where, precisely, to enter the story.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

I drew on my own experience to write both Cory and Emer. Personality-wise I don't know if I'm very much like either of them, but they are certainly derived from me. For instance, I was not a failure in school, as Cory is, but when I was in school I certainly blew off the odd assignment, and sometimes took for granted that the consequences of whatever minor slackage I was guilty of just would not be that bad. Nor am I the type-A executive director of an international NGO, as Emer is—I am not obsessive, as she is, or damaged beyond repair by trauma—but I do love a spreadsheet, and I do, sometimes, perseverate on things, and I've certainly experienced some unpleasant things. I think of fictional characters, in general, as, kind of, cherry-picked, finite distillations of certain traits and experiences belonging to the author. Real people are, you might say, infinite. We are always changing; a character—who is made merely out of a few thousand words, who is subject to the constraints of a constructed plot—cannot change.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

This book was influenced by many things. The trials of Jeffrey Epstein and the Sackler Family. The #MeToo movement. The births of my son, and then, two years later, my daughter. My sobriety. The pandemic, of course. Non-literary inspirations are as infinite as we are, I think.

Visit Rachel Lyon's website.

The Page 69 Test: Self-Portrait with Boy.

My Book, The Movie: Self-Portrait with Boy.

The Page 69 Test: Fruit of the Dead.

--Marshal Zeringue