Fruiting Bodies Stories
Fruiting Bodies Stories by Kathryn Harlan, published by W. W. Norton, Incorporated on October 15, 2024, is a genre-bending debut collection that presents eight unique narratives filled with desire, wisdom, and elements of magic amidst decay. This edition, comprising 268 pages, explores a range of themes through characters—primarily queer and female—who find themselves on the brink of transformation. The stories traverse various tones, from fantastical to gothic, inviting readers into eerie worlds that resonate with echoes of myth and folklore.
Readers will encounter a diverse array of narratives, including “The Changeling,” where two cousins await a potentially dangerous family member, and “Endangered Animals,” which follows Jane as she navigates a poignant farewell during a road trip across a climate-altered landscape. Other stories delve into personal histories and magical gambles, culminating in the title story, where partners Agnes and Geb face an unexpected disruption in their secluded life. Fruiting Bodies Stories offers a rich tapestry of literary exploration, addressing themes of discovery and coming-of-age in challenging times.
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Finalist for the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
One of Vulture‘s Best Books of the Year
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.
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