Sweet Fruit, Sour Land by Rebecca Ley

Sweet Fruit, Sour Land

Rebecca Ley

With the slow revelation of past and present I felt sad for the two main characters. Living in a dystopic world where food is very scarce, these strong women shared their loves, hopes, anxieties and fears with me. Their stories, told in slightly different tones of voice, contain continuous snippets of information like pinpricks, little facts that make you realise the seriousness/awkwardness of their situation, and how that came to be…

Extract
‘I imagine the world,’ she said. ‘Like it’s not a thing that is dying, that it’s not a thing that was born out of a bang or matter or stars or explosions. That it’s just a thing that manifested because the conditions were perfect, and all that’s happening now is the conditions aren’t right, and it’s manifesting itself out of existence, as it perfectly well should. I imagine it’s the same for us. Time isn’t linear. We just choose to live in this moment as a comfort to ourselves. Everything that’s already happened, and everything that will happen, is already contained in this moment. There’s no birth and there’s no death. There’s only the right conditions to appear, and then the conditions gradually cease, and we leave.’ She looked at us. ‘There’s no sadness to it. We are both everywhere and nowhere. And everything and nothing. We exist and don’t exist. We have been born and we will die. Just like the world.’
Parallels
  • One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses by Lucy Corin
  • Sealed by Naomi Booth