Bruised Fruit

by Anna Livia

Relates the intertwined stories of three people who turn to Ella Weissman, a feminist therapist, to reveal their loves, fears, and confusions

Genres: Fiction, Queer, Lesbian

Paperback

First published March 1, 1999

About the author

Anna Livia was a lesbian feminist writer and linguistic theorist. Born in Ireland, she grew up in London, England and Swaziland. As a professor, she taught at the University of Illinois and the University of California, Berkeley.

Reviews

[Cinnia Literary Raccoon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is definitely an acquired taste and a bit dated (per the terminology, slang, and references used, especially for the LGBTQ community). So, YMMV relative to my experience. Personally, I found that the first part of the book was so horrifying that I had to keep taking breaks and inched my way through chapter by chapter. (This is why I concurrently read so many other books at the same time as this one lol.) But once I got past that part, it clicked that this book is really more of a horror/comedy/satire and I kept cracking up all the rest of the way through.

What I liked:
- The humor, as it does NOT hold back in the slightest and is very provocative. And very fucked up. (My mother would be horrified.)
- Figuring out how all the characters were connected to each other was a lot of fun and I was even inspired to draw out a very messy character map as a result.
- It's very "real" about the taboos people don't like to talk about that much in the LGBTQ community (especially at the time when this was written), and I appreciate its honesty about abuse, groupthink, and mental health problems.
- Sydney! I love them. Definitely a new favorite character.
- I liked having insight into LGBTQ history and the culture of late 90's San Francisco from this book since I'm most familiar with modern LGBTQ culture and don't hear about stories from this era that much.

What I was iffy about:
- A lot of the terminology etc rubbed me the wrong way, especially with the way Sydney was treated/characterized by the others (particularly Caroline) and so on. I mean, yeah, a lot of it was said to prove the point that it's not a great way to talk about peoples' identities and sexualities, but I still winced while reading a lot of it. Sydney is intersex, btw, and so a lot of characters repeatedly Just Don't Get It. I also majorly winced at the biphobia, even though I realize that it was an abuse victim automatically parroting the words of her abuser and that her actions don't really reflect being biphobic.
- The ending was fun because so many different plot lines intersected in such an entertainingly dramatic fashion, but I kinda felt like Amanda's arc was a bit too convenient and that Sydney's arc still left some unanswered questions.
- A LOT of my misgivings about this book could be summed up with "Hey [Insert Character's Name Here], what the actual fuck?!"

Content Warnings:
- Child abuse
- Rape
- Animal death
- Physical abuse
- Emotional abuse
- Alcoholism
- Violence
- Gore
- Murder
- Organized crime
- Kinks (in general)
- Queerphobia (e.g. characters saying queerphobic things, but it's portrayed as them being ignorant and wrong)

[emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

a bit cartoonish and with outdated representation of intersex people, but overall not a bad read

[lacey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some parts are very outdated, especially the way intersex individuals are spoken about. Overall, it was fairly entertaining discovering how all the characters were connected.