I Should Read That

Book review¹

During a grocery run to her local shopping center, Shell Pine sees a ‘HELP NEEDED’ sign in a flower shop window. She’s just left her fiancé, lost her job, and moved home to her parents’ house. She has to make a change and bring some good into her life, so she goes inside and takes a chance. Shell realizes right away that flowers are just the good thing she’s been looking for, as is Neve, the beautiful florist who wrote the sign asking for help. The thing is, Neve needs help more than Shell could possibly imagine. An orchid growing out of sight in the heart of the mall is watching them closely. His name is Baby, and the beautiful florist belongs to him. He’s young, he’s hungry, and he’ll do just about anything to make sure he can keep growing big and strong. Nothing he eats – nobody he eats – can satisfy him, except the thing he most desires. Neve. He adores her and wants to consume her, and will stop at nothing to eat the one he loves. This is a story about possession, and monstrosity, and working retail. It is about hunger and desire, and other terrible things that grow.

Imagine a book about a 30-something woman at a crossroads in life. She’s lost her job and her long-term relationship and has to move back into her parents’ house in the town she thought she’d left behind. She sees a ‘help needed’ sign in a local flower shop window and her life changes forever.

Now imagine this is a story directed by David Lynch.

I’ve been wanting to read one of Sarah Maria Griffin’s books for ages and I’m so glad I picked up Eat the Ones You Love. She’s a wonderful writer – the prose in this book are absolutely gorgeous. It’s a slow burn of a story driven by the characters rather than plot, and she keeps you totally compelled by the familiar faces – in a way, we all know the people in this book:

• The girl who has just been dumped and is pretending she’s fine (even though we all know she’s not fine).
• The guy who never managed to break out of his small hometown.
• The kid who has so much potential, if only he can get out.
• The person who had her life totally planned out until it suddenly fell apart.

In many ways it’s a quiet story about a group of friends in a Dublin suburb getting on their lives. I think this was my favourite aspect of the book. Griffin makes these characters shine in their own way and you really feel like you know them because, in a way, you do.

And then, of course, there’s Baby.

Baby is our narrator. Baby is also a monstrous, sentient orchid who has crept into the mind and life of Neve, the florist. He is frightening and hungry and a total joy to read as he looms large over Shell’s life (though she doesn’t know it yet). As someone who has always wanted a triffid to be my friend, it’s not terribly surprising that I loved Baby. He’s just a little guy doing his best to survive and love.

I loved how unapologetically weird Eat the Ones You Love is. Will it work for every reader? No, probably not. But if you like your books strange and surreal, I can’t recommend this one more highly. I can’t wait to dig into Sarah Maria Griffin’s backlist and experience her writing all over again.

Eat the Ones You Love is available in the UK on 03 June from Titan Books.

1. A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. ↩︎