Bookish Reviews: Peach by Emma Glass

‘Peach’ Revels in our Discomfort and Disgust

Synopsis from Goodreads:

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. As Peach struggles through the next few days, she is stalked by the memories of her unacknowledged trauma. Though she tries to close her eyes to what has happened, Peach at last begins to understand the drastic action she must take.

Emma Glass’s debut novel Peach has been lauded by critics as “dazzling”, “groundbreaking” and “astonishing”. And with such a promising preview printed on the inner flap of the book it’s not hard to wonder why I took it out from my library.

This slender novella is just under 100 pages and is written from the perspective of Peach a young woman who lives in London with her sex obsessed, immature parents and their newborn son, her little brother. Peach’s Mam and Dad are so wrapped up in their own sexcapades and having fun that they don’t notice Peach’s sudden dip in mood and rising anxiety.

Sprung up tight as a metal coil ready to spring, Peach obsesses over the “greasy”, “sausage fingered” man who raped her, but remains mum about what happened, not even telling her boyfriend Green.

Glass’s writing is a bit of a mind eff. Its experimental prose with echoes of stream of consciousness writing: everything comes out as one. There’s no punctuation to set aside the dialogue and tongue twister words often appear. So although this novella is small, these moments often trip us up and slow down our reading. Almost like zooming down the street on a bicycle only to roll right over a lumpy rock and nearly be tossed clean off. Peach is a jolting and jostling read and has a jarring edge to it that isn’t always found in verse.

There’s an abundance of alliteration and rhyming too, in what I perceive to be a way to acknowledge Peach’s young age, and to take something that could be considered childlike, fanciful and whimsical and turn it on its head. It’s rhyming poetry, but painted black. Some readers have found these passages to be annoying, but personally I didn’t have a gripe with it.

Plot and content wise Peach is grotesque and shocking. Peach’s recollections about her rape and the ways she acts out are extremely graphic. One such scene entails Peach probing at her savagely torn vagina and threading a needle from her sewing kit and stitching herself up. Peach revels in our discomfort and disgust. And while of course that’s expected after such a horrendous attack and abuse Glass’s prose reeks of shock value. It hungers to make us squirm.

Take for instance, the prominence of Peach’s swollen abdomen. Pregnancy is ruled out quickly in the section “Kiss on my lips, piss on a stick” but we’re described in increasingly disturbing detail how bulbous her belly is becoming. My own stomach was clenched and cramped for about the entire duration of reading Peach, say what you will about Emma Glass’s writing but one thing this visceral prose does undeniably is makes us feel.

I’d be in remiss if I don’t take a moment here to warn about some especially disturbing scenes. One of which involves not just a graphic description of butchering a human being, but also goes so far as to include cannibalism. As if murder and mutilation wasn’t enough.

Peach’s ending is one of the most puzzling parts of the novella. It’s an ambiguous and aims to be as nauseating as possible. It succeeds on both counts. It’s grim, it’s gruesome, and it’s deliberately as disgusting as possible. It suits the entire tone of Peach but I still can’t help but feel not only put off by it, but almost let down in a way. By going so overboard with describing the aftershocks of Peach’s dark alley rape, Emma Glass undermines the value and impact of her ending.

Recommended? No.