What’s Fruits all about?:

Fruits follows a man locked in a cell reminiscing about the frightening events that caused him to be placed there.

What did I think?:

Steve Mosby is another new to me author which is one of the reasons why I’m loving my Short Stories Challenge so much. I get to read so many different authors that I’ve never heard of before, especially in collections such as these where you get a variety of styles under the same genre – crime fiction. He is the author of novels such as The Murder Code and The Nightmare Place which have been translated into nine different languages and rocketed to the top ten on bestseller lists in countries such as France, Germany and Holland. Now after reading Steve’s work, this is definitely an author I need to read more from. Fruits is shorter than your average short story but his lyrical style of writing and carefully chosen words really pack a punch.

Our narrator for the story is John who is writing to his partner, Caroline knowing that she may never receive his letters. He is being held captive in a tiny cell with a dirty mattress and a hole for a toilet whilst outside he can see beautiful countryside and a prominent apple tree, the fruits of which make it to his plate every morning on a tray that his captor pushes inside every morning without John noticing. His jailer has also started putting a scrap of paper on the tray alongside his food and it is this that John is using to write to Caroline, to set some things straight, to apologise and to try and redeem himself.

John is a writer by trade and recently he wrote a rather controversial book that focused on the murder of a woman called Jane Ellis, whose body and murderer has never been found or brought to justice. John used the fact that a rose was sent to Jane’s husband one year after his disappearance with a note saying that “she lives forever,” as a way to tell her story and certainly not to “exploit her,” as some individuals accused him of. Now John has ended up in a very tricky situation, held in a cell with no hope of release, eating apples from the tree outside but certain he is being poisoned in other ways and hearing/seeing other things outside his cell that makes him understand how Jane Ellis and victims like her could potentially be living forever.

I really admire the author of this short story for putting so much detail into such a short space of time. It is written beautifully and with such finesse that I immediately went back to the beginning and started again to try and pick up on little things that I may have missed first time around. It leaves you with so many questions in the end – about John and his relationship with his captor and about the captor himself and his past, present and potential future. I’d almost love another companion story from the captor’s eyes just to try and understand exactly what has been going on. I don’t really want to say too much more about the plot or the ending for fear of spoiling things but on the strength of this little story alone I’ll certainly be looking out for more work by Steve Mosby.

Would I recommend it?:

But of course!

Star rating (out of 5):

NEXT SHORT STORY: Stations Of The Cross by Julie Orringer from the collection How To Breathe Underwater.