Flesh of the Peach
by Helen McClory
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Pub Date 20 Apr 2017 | Archive Date 8 Mar 2022
Description
An intense journey into and out of rage and grief, via sex and violence, following 27 year-old artist, Sarah Browne and set mostly in the American Southwest. In New York, the ending of Sarah’s recent relationship with a married woman has coincided with the death of her estranged, aristocratic mother, leaving her a substantial amount of money and an unrecognised burden of toxic grief. Rather than return home to England, she decides to travel by Greyhound to her mother’s cabin in New Mexico. There she’s drawn into a passionate relationship with Theo, a man whose quiet stability seems to complement her mercurial character.
But as Sarah’s emotional turmoil grows, there are warning signs that tragedy could ensue. In Flesh of the Peach Scottish First Book of the Year winner, Helen McClory, paints a beautiful and painful portrait of a woman’s unravelling, combining exquisite, and at times experimental, prose with a powerful understanding of the effects of unresolved loss.
McClory is one of the most exciting literary talents to emerge from Scotland in recent years.
Advance Praise
‘McClory’s is a lepidopterist’s language that skewers with playful, painful precision.’ Joanna Walsh, author of Vertigo
‘Bold and unflinching, McClory’s debut novel is A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing meets Inside Llewyn Davis: a brutal, clear-eyed study of a failing artist that shatters our expectations of what a woman should be.’
Kirsty Logan author of The Gracekeepers
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9781911332251 |
| PRICE | £9.99 (GBP) |
Featured Reviews
Jill A, Educator
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.
Nicola B, Reviewer
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?
M M, Reviewer
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.
sara m, Reviewer
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!
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