Mirroring the gradual collapse of society around her, Shell’s recent personal life is marked by accumulating loss, including her fiancé and her job. A woman has got to eat, so Shell takes a trip to the grocery store at the local shopping mall, a dilapidated complex on the edge of closure, a shell of the prosperous commerce of yore. But there, sitting within this dim setting, Shell discovers a fertile beacon of vibrancy, a flower shop with a springy and attractive florist named Neve and a posted placard of HELP NEEDED.
Finding herself drawn to the mysterious beauty of the flowers and Neve alike, Shell begins working at the shop, creatively inspired by the artistry of floral arranging and her growing friendship with Neve and an informal club made up of individuals still working at the mall.
However, sitting within the flower shop is a young orchid closely watching them all, especially Shell. Secretly known only to Neve, and affectionately called Baby by her, this orchid has desires as strong as these humans he observes. And this plant has got to eat too.
The synopsis for Sarah Maria Griffin’s Eat the Ones You Love would understandably invoke thoughts of Little Shop of Horrors for most people. I also kept thinking about Sue Burke’s Semiosis trilogy, not in terms of the plot, but in the sentient plant character and point-of-view perspective. Burke’s Stevland and all of his offshoots have exceptional intelligence, but also an inherent botanical drive toward ecological community that balances with selfishness, even if unequally. Griffin’s Baby has intelligence, but is driven by a more animistic predator instinct that completely overrides any consideration of broader ecological success – more like the Audrey II. But getting into the ‘mind’ of how a plant thinks is a big divergence from what one can get by watching Little Shop of Horrors in any of its incarnations. I also enjoyed how Baby’s physical infiltration of humans allows for the plant to know the other characters as the narrator of a novel would, even if you then need to take observations with a grain of unreliable salt.
Even with much of the novel coming from Baby’s point-of-view, Baby only inserts direct thoughts in brief moments that could lead a reader to otherwise assume the story is in third-person. Likewise, the thematic foundation of the novel ultimately lies with the relationships between the humans and their degrees of selfishness that become reflected in the hunger and monstrosity of the killer orchid.
At all levels, from their individual lives, to the mall, to the world at large: things are falling apart. The characters are all searching for meaning, affirmation, connection, and love: emotional foods to nourish their souls and allow them to continue actually living amid the encroaching emptiness. The hunger for these makes many of them desperate, and can make what seems like attraction and love turn to something more sinister and destructive. Rather than a community built on communication and sacrifice, things slip further apart behind a veneer. Rather than being evil, these characters are trapped by some aspect of their selfish nature or the truth being kept from them. And even in moments when they should (or do) realize a truth, they first respond with hesitance or a willful ignorance to try and avoid the potential problem, until it becomes too late.
Eat the Ones You Love features similar problematic relationships that populate Little Shop of Horrors (albeit no sadistic dentists here) with lesbian and bisexual twists. But like the classic show/movie, this novel is dark horror, not uplifting, despite moments of lighter vibes. It’s not a novel I’d recommend reading if you want some cheering up, but it is a novel done well that pays homage to a classic without being too similar.
