Fruit Fly

About the book

A dark, fast-moving novel about desire, obsession and the messy edges of growing up queer. Josh Silver writes in short, nervous chapters with a narrator who keeps circling the people who hurt him, half aware that he is doing it. It sits somewhere between a coming-of-age story and a psychological thriller: funny in places, genuinely uncomfortable in others, and unusually honest about shame, body image, and the way online life bleeds into real intimacy. Underneath the speed there is a serious book about wanting to be seen, and what it costs when you finally are.

What I thought

What stayed with me was how little it flinches. Silver lets his narrator be unlikeable — needy, self-sabotaging, cruel when he feels small — and refuses to tidy that up into a lesson. I recognised the exact texture of certain scenes: the endless scrolling, the performance of being fine, the way attention can feel like oxygen and poison at once. It reads quickly, almost too quickly, and then sits heavy afterwards. Savage and funny in the same breath, and one of the few books I have read that treats queer shame as something living rather than something already resolved.

Favourite ideas & themes

• desire
• obsession
• queerness
• coming of age

My verdict

Sharp, uncomfortable and impossible to put down.