Flesh of the Peach

I first discovered McClory’s writing through her debut collection of flash fiction, On the Edges of Vision – which won Saltire’s Debut Award. A prize well-deserved.

This, on the other hand, is the author’s first novel. I approached it rather tentatively. McClory’s writing is dense, detailed and evocative – a natural fit for short stories, snapshots and poetry. I wasn’t sure if I could handle such intensity in a novel-sized narrative. But I gave it a try.

To be frank, even after having awarded the book 4/5 on Goodreads (it’s more of a 3.5/5 for me), I still have mixed feelings about it. Most of these feelings are positive.

The prose is dense and poetic, it conjures up a myriad of feelings and landscapes (both physical and mental), that at times you really want to swat away in order to get to the meat of the plot and character. The barrage of language and imagery is so intense, in fact, that it took me a month to read. There are no fly-away sentences. Every. Single. One. Is. Packed. To. Maximum. Capacity. This is definitely not a ‘light’ book, not a so called ‘beach read’ (whatever that means). Whilst the language and imagery are the strongest aspects of this novel – they are also, often, it’s shortcoming. The language sometimes desensitizes the reader from the leading characters and from the plot, to a point where it becomes difficult to understand not only Sarah (the main character) but the story as a whole.

To draw a comparison: Flesh of the Peach is like an indulgent, rich and complex dessert – a dark chocolate melt in the middle with a ganache center spiced with smoke. You can only eat so much before the taste overwhelms you to the point of becoming bland in its intensity. It is a work to be chipped away, bit by bit, made to be savoured – each and every chapter, paragraph, sentence, phrase, word, syllable…not to be hoovered down in one go.

The characters in this novel are earthy (at times they ground together like sand on your back teeth), the sketches we see of them through Sarah’s eyes are brief but full of texture – there is no single flat surface in this book. Everything and everyone is brimming with detail, colour, depth. Nobody is likeable but you will find yourself slowly but surely relating to their imperfections, they are broken (in familiar ways) and human – just as we all are. “Hell is other people” – the name of a contemporary horror film, but also a fitting description of Sarah’s world. I would go as far as to change that to: “Hell is me, you, us.” Sarah is complex, I was often perplexed by her behaviour (even though, looking back, I feel like we have finally found an understanding). I kept dipping in and out, often losing my connection with her character. She did make a comeback (for me, personally) at the very end, where she felt more lucid and grounded (and so did the prose) because, it seems to me, she connected with her body (and the present tense) – almost like she decided to finally occupy it, for real. Unlike the beginning of the novel, where much of our time was spent in her memories and reminiscences. It felt claustrophobic. Sarah is no simpleton. There is no solution for her kind of trouble and there doesn’t need to be.

I will need to return to this book a second time to understand Sarah’s character better. It will be easier then, since I will not have to deal with the initial shock that the prose had caused me. As I read I kept pulling the novel apart for quotes, at times bookmarking entire chapters. Chipping away – bit by bit.

Good to know that, before making my mind up, I will have to re-read Flesh of the Peach again. The wait for McClory’s next book will be that much less painful when I have a re-read to look forward to!

I absolutely adored this book., I read it in a single sitting and loved the style of narration. I can see this being a runaway success. Helen McClory is a talented and provocative writer who asks us to follow Sarah's journey of turbulence anger and despair as art. Her language is just beautiful and several passages required a re-reading to fully appreciate her craft. I will be giving this book to several of my artist friends as I loved it so much. A five star read.

Despite the influx of books, I haven’t read much this week. But I did finish The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips: a short fabulist novel that takes the mundane reality of being a twenty-something pencil pusher in a post-crash economy and turns it into an eerie, unpredictable parallel reality with an element of playing God. I didn’t love reading it at first but it kept compelling me to continue until its absolutely brilliant ending. I can’t remember the last time I celebrated a novel for its ending.

Last week I also read and took a moment to digest Flesh of the Peach by Helen McClory. It’s filled with another form of twenty-something struggle within a character who doesn’t realise how fucked up she is and whose meandering takes her to unexpected places. I found it wonderful on the sentence level, with observations and descriptions that are just so. Sometimes surprising, other times like you’d already thought of them, there’s some kind of satisfying alchemy that makes them slot into your brain and reside there, like you’re better off for having read them. Also, the characters are constantly drinking tea, which is very much my sensibility. It’s out from Freight Books on 20 April.

What’s on your nightstand?

This is just brilliant and beautiful. McClory's sentence-level writing is just masterful, but never at the expense of the overall story and characterization. Loved this.

A really enjoyable read!
Absolutely beautiful writing, wonderful storytelling and fantastic character work.
The chapter lengths really worked for me. Sometimes you only have 5 minutes free to read and this book enabled me to me able to have a read without being halfway through a page before having to leave it.
I will be recommending this to my bookish friends!