Tainted fruit often evokes evil. Examples are everywhere, from the apple in Snow White, to “Strange Fruit,” Billie Holiday’s wail about lynching, to Persephone’s indulgence in a single pomegranate seed, a transgression that condemns her to the underworld for one third of each year.

In “That Which Feeds Us,” Keala Kendall’s new young adult novel, it’s the rotting flesh of persimmons that signals wickedness. Their sweet stench lingers throughout this eerie, atmospheric book, which the children’s division of Random House will publish later this month.

Kendall’s book tells the story of Lehua, a 19-year-old college dropout-turned-mortician’s assistant as she searches for her sister at an exclusive island resort. As Lehua probes deeper, the story darkens, ultimately becoming an ominous parable of violence, loss and return that befits the novel’s subtitle: A Hawaiian Gothic.

Ideas showcases stories, opinion and analysis about Hawaiʻi, from the state’s sharpest thinkers, to stretch our collective thinking about a problem or an issue. Email news@civilbeat.org to submit an idea or an essay.

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Reading “That Which Feeds Us” crystallized something I’ve long felt subconsciously but never quite put into words. It seems to me that the writing, television and film that best examine the great troubles we face in Hawaiʻi often do so through our misdeeds and vulnerabilities, through the seediness and grit of the human condition.

Over the past quarter century, writers like Chris McKinney, Scott Kikkawa and Kristiana Kahakauwila have shattered the glossy image of paradise with their tales of moral ambiguity, dispossession and vice.

They are the opposite of the priest in his confessional — rather than receiving our sins and then absolving us with Hail Marys, they gather them up and put them into the world for everyone to grapple with.

I run in journalist circles and have done so for many years. If I’m honest, my colleagues and I sometimes nurse a certain sense of self-importance.

We meet for drinks and talk about our latest investigations, about the wrongdoing we’ll soon reveal. We can get a little cocksure, especially as the night carries on.

Yet rarely does our work burrow into the innermost self in the way that, say, the title story of Kahakauwila’s book “This is Paradise” has done for me.

This marvel of a tale follows the lives of three groups of women, all of whom encounter a tourist named Susan. They needle Susan from afar, annoyed by the print and cut of her bikini, and later, for shopping in it. Their criticism softens somewhat as the story progresses and Susan drifts into the sordid corners of Honolulu’s nightlife, with terrible consequences.

I first read “This is Paradise” about 10 years ago. I can still hear Susan relentlessly droning “This is paradise” before eventually turning up dead on the beach.

What makes the story land with such force is that Kahakauwila explores the many gradations of right and wrong, good and bad. Susan represents all that is wrong with the tourist industrial complex — she’s exactly the sort of person we love to hate. Yet as she finds herself in increasing danger, none of the women step in to help her.

For decades, what defined Hawaiʻi in popular culture was chirpy rom-coms like “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and “50 First Dates,” along with police action flicks where cops wearing bushy mustaches and tight jeans chased bad guys in the rough corners of Honolulu.

In the literary world, books like “From Here to Eternity,” “Hawaii,” and “Molokaʻi” represented our islands on the bigger, continental stage — whether we liked it or not.

If culture is meant to reflect our moment, if it’s a way for people to make sense of the world around them, could we ever count on James Jones or Adam Sandler or Jack Lord to do that for people in Hawaiʻi?

The answer is no, and not necessarily because these books and films and series are bad, but because they were never meant for us.

The producers of “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” weren’t trying to make a film that forced us to think about the cost of living or the military’s possession of crown lands. They made it for a fawning mainland audience, hoping to get a few laughs thanks to a goofy cast in Hawaiʻi.

When it’s at its sharpest, culture often reveals what we’re anxious about, unearthing what lies beneath the shiny finish of civility. This is partly what gives “Native Son,” the novel about racial segregation, or “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” the reportage about sharecropping, their commanding and enduring power.

In the literature of Hawaiʻi, I think it’s worth pointing out what kinds of stories writers are telling and asking what those decisions might mean.

Hawaiʻi has produced notably few novels that lean into the literary tropes of our day. Where are the MFA-style coming-of-age books, the ones about recent college graduates living collectively in urban warehouses. Point me to the novels that unfold entirely in a Berlin flat or a farmhouse in upstate New York?

Perhaps these kinds of stories feel indulgent, given what’s at play in Hawaiʻi. Perhaps the darker tales, the speculative, dystopian ones, offer a more natural point of entry to the big questions of our times.

Kendall might be the most recent author to do this, but she’s certainly not the only one. Last month, Shay Kauwe published her debut novel, “The Killing Spell,” a haunting fantasy about language, climate catastrophe and magic. Megan Kamalei Kakimoto is another noteworthy example. In her breakout collection, “Every Drop Is a Man’s Nightmare,” she masterfully ruminates about occupation, superstition, and the shadows beneath tourism’s veneer.

In Hawaiʻi, we tend to put on a convincing imitation of paradise, and we keep it up just long enough for visitors to hold onto their illusions before turning home.

Books like Kendall’s help expose what you can easily miss if you’re not looking closely. And I think they do so to far greater effect than, I’m sad to admit, the earnest magazine features and news stories I’ve spent my life writing.

Leonard Cohen famously sang, “You want it darker.” Yes, I do want it darker, and I think we need it darker. This, it seems to me, is the best way to interrogate the things that matter to our islands now.