Everyone Wants A Piece of Josh Silver
One of the year’s buzziest novels, Fruit Fly skewers a publishing industry hungry to turn identity and trauma into bestsellers, and has inadvertently made its author Josh Silver the literary world’s new poster boy. Ahead of his appearance at the Singapore Writers Festival this month, we put him in the spotlight and find out what he has to say about mining reality for fiction, chasing fame, and writing on his own terms.
It was hard to find a copy of Josh Silver’s Fruit Fly when it first came out this April – just about every bookshop here (and everywhere) ran out of stock.
The book’s juicy premise: main character, Mallory Maddox, is a writer and something of a one‑hit wonder. She penned a bestseller seven years ago, but has been creatively bankrupt ever since. Desperate to escape literary purgatory, she Googles how to write a bestseller and lands on a Reddit thread (as we all do), where the hive mind offers a sure‑fire recipe for striking gold these days: “Go gay. Go sad. Go dark.”
Problem is, Maddox is a straight white woman who lives in an upper‑class neighbourhood with a seemingly loving husband (read: she’s as far removed from this advice as one can get). So she downloads Grindr, uses her husband’s photo without his knowledge, and attempts to assimiate into the scene. When she meets Leo, a young gay drug addict who seems to be the walking manifestation of “go gay, go sad, go dark”, by chance, she seizes the opportunity to get close, posing as a kindly therapist in order to assemble all the “right ingredients” for her next literary hit.
At its core, Fruit Fly is a sharp, satirical look at narrative ownership, and what happens when another’s lived experience becomes raw material for one’s own success. For Silver, 37, the subject hits closer to home than readers might realise.
British author Josh Silver has arrived at the crossroads of his career with Fruit Fly, his addictive debut adult novel about, ironically, an author trying to pen a bestseller. We photographed him in Sydney in early October this year when he was there as part of his global book tour. Josh wears cotton parka and wool gabardine pants, Celine. All accessories, his own
An openly queer man who spent a decade pursuing acting, he had long been advised not to come out for fear that it would hurt his career. As queer stories became increasingly marketable though (hello Heated Rivalry), he found himself wondering how he was now supposed to present himself. Was he supposed to play up to stereotypes? He hadn’t changed, but the terms on which he could be himself had. The same tension runs through Fruit Fly as Maddox sees queerness as something she can adopt to make her writing more “with it”.
“Why are you putting an experience that’s not your own into a story? Is it because you care? Is it because you want to shine a light on a certain topic?” he said in an exclusive interview over Zoom from Sydney in early October this year. “Or is it because you’ve noticed that there’s currency attached to it now and it could help sell books?”
Josh wears cotton denim jeans and Miles lambskin loafers, Celine. T‑shirt and accessories, his own
Silver’s bio reads like a story in itself. Born in the Lake District, where he grew up on a farm, he moved to Manchester – where he’s still based – as a teenager before heading to London to train at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Throughout his acting years, he worked plenty of odd jobs (including selling lamps) on the side to sustain his career and pay the rent. Somewhere along the way though, he found himself becoming too preoccupied with how others perceived him, prompting him to walk away from the stage and pivot into nursing – a shift that was deeply intertwined with his personal life.
After battling alcohol and drug addiction, Silver got sober around 27. His experiences with the healthcare professionals who helped him sparked an interest in psychology and therapy. As nursing was one of the few retraining courses the UK government would fund for degree‑holders, he saw it as a route into healthcare, with the hope of pursuing psychology later.
Writing has given Silver catharsis and perspective. He’s now working on his fifth novel – one revolving around mental illness and what it means today (and no, it’s not a sequel to Fruit Fly). Josh wears cotton sweater, wool gabardine pants and leather boat shoes, Celine. All accessories, his own
His work in nursing brought him face to face with people who were often at their most vulnerable. “You definitely see how much pain people can be put through, but what you really start to understand is the way the world works, and how it keeps certain people down,” he reflected. “People from more privileged backgrounds have an easier time accessing help and support. Money changes everything, including how people view and talk to you.”
Nursing became a lifeline for both his mental health and his soul. “When I quit acting and became a nurse, I think I just changed the way I saw creativity... Rather than using it to achieve a certain level of recognition, I started using it to untangle complicated thoughts, or to process emotions.” he said. “I made a promise to myself that writing would never become what acting had become for me – about how others viewed me.”
That shift in mindset has flowered handsomely for Silver. Fruit Fly is his fourth novel in the four years since he picked up the pen, and his visit to Sydney was part of its spawling global tour.
With reportedly nearly a dozen reprints and some 100,000 copies sold in the US alone, Fruit Fly has appeared on bestseller lists including The New York Times, USA Today and The Sunday Times. The biggest stamp of acclaim by literary standards today? Entertainment powerhouse A24 has optioned it for a TV series, with Silver attached as an executive producer.
Fruit Fly has appeared on major bestseller lists and been optioned by A24 for a TV series. What Silver is most excited about right now, though, is moving to New York – a place he has long been drawn to for its intense energy and where many of his friends live – next year. Josh wears wool cashmere sweater, Celine. Accessories, his own
In a way, Fruit Fly has echoed Silver’s own life. Maddox eventually publishes her book built around Leo’s life (or what he’s told her, anyway), and the attention comes flooding back. Silver, meanwhile, has found himself at the centre of a cultural moment with his own novel.
Where the two differs, is down to intention. “I don’t think of it (writing) as sitting and staring at people, trying to see what I can get from them.” Rather, nursing allowed him to become part of different factions of society and understand how systems treat people, he explained. There’s a difference between being curious about other people’s lives, and treating them as material.”
It’s impossible to control what happens to a story once it’s out in the world, or what people might take from it. But ultimately, that story is one’s own. Said Silver: “I’ve said to myself that I’ll never publish a book that I don’t feel I can stand by and say I’m proud of.”
PHOTOGRAPHY ALEXANDER COOKE STYLING LLOYD DAVID SIBUG GROOMING CAROLINA ROJAS
THIS STORY FIRST APPEARED IN F ZINE VOL 11