Peach
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Introducing a dazzling new literary voice--a wholly original novel as groundbreaking as the works of Eimear McBride and Max Porter.
Something has happened to Peach. Staggering around the town streets in the aftermath of an assault, Peach feels a trickle of blood down her legs, a lingering smell of her anonymous attacker on her skin. It hurts to walk, but she manages to make her way to her home, where she stumbles into another oddly nightmarish reality: Her parents can't seem to comprehend that anything has happened to their daughter.
The next morning, Peach tries to return to the routines of her ordinary life, going to classes, spending time with her boyfriend, Green, trying to find comfort in the thought of her upcoming departure for college. And yet, as Peach struggles through the next few days, she is stalked by the memories of her unacknowledged trauma. Sleeping is hard when she is haunted by the glimpses of that stranger's gaping mouth. Working is hard when her assailant's rancid smell still fills her nostrils. Eating is impossible when her stomach is swollen tight as a drum. Though she tries to close her eyes to what has happened, Peach at last begins to understand the drastic, gruesome action she must take.
In this astonishing debut, Emma Glass articulates the unspeakable with breathtaking verve. Intensely physical, with rhythmic, visceral prose, Peach marks the arrival of a visionary new voice.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Glass's fierce and mesmerizing debut straddles the line between fable and novel as it chronicles the effects of a sexual assault on a young woman by a depraved stranger named Lincoln. The book opens with teenage Peach walking home after the attack, battered and bruised. The lingering smells, sounds, and taste of the event are evoked in vivid detail: "charcoal breath," "burnt flesh," "crack crackly crackling" blood. Peach tells no one about what happened to her neither her boyfriend, Green, nor her oversexed parents and instead stitches her wounds up in the bath using a thread and sewing needle. In subsequent days, nightmares, hallucinations, and fear creep in alongside the evocative scent of roasting sausage and eerie sightings of Lincoln lurking in the woods near Peach's school. Peach relishes the comfort of Green's generous embrace while trying to ignore the psychological, emotional, and physical changes roiling within her. These surprisingly tender moments between Green and Peach offer respite from an otherwise challenging story as it leads up to its unforgettable twist ending. Making full use of metaphor, alliteration, and wordplay, Glass's remarkable prose stretches the boundaries of storytelling throughout, adding depth and strange beauty to this vital novel.
