Emma Glass’ debut novel, PEACH, is slim but packed with sentences that are as powerful as they are heartbreaking, and her poetic prose will swirl around your psyche for weeks to come. This tiny book straddles the line between dream state and reality, defeat and vengeance. Peach, the protagonist, is navigating a world not knowing what to do, or where to turn, after something terrible happens to her.

Peach is raped by a man named Lincoln, who says: Close your eyes. Close them tight. Tight like your --- close them. Close them. Close them. During the aftermath of her rape, Peach remembers the event in flashes. Clipped sentences describe the smell of burnt fat and the grease that penetrates her. Peach, a vegetarian, tastes flesh and meat.

"This is a brave novel, and a first-person narrative about the aftermath of a rape that is real and raw and deserves to be read."

Lincoln, the perpetrator, who haunts Peach like a phantom throughout the novel --- and he is a nightmare, a creep who appears out of nowhere and who few people seem to notice --- is described as a sausage vendor, or a delivery man. We get descriptions of Lincoln at the beginning of the book: His black mouth. A slit in his skin. Open. Gaping. Lincoln is described as big and greasy with sausage fingers. When he stalks Peach outside a restaurant, watching her, no one notices his gaping presence, and the grease he leaves on the window, an outline of his body that shouldn’t be there. No one notices but Peach’s boyfriend, Green.

After the assault, Peach goes home. Bleeding, she sews parts of her skin together. She notices her expanding belly, a presence throughout the novel, like the memory she cannot get rid of. Her baby brother --- whom she calls Jelly Baby --- is downstairs. Her parents roll over one another and talk about sex, having sex together, and how Peach and Green would make beautiful babies. Peach and Green are in college. At one point, they examine her belly and think a baby is inside. Maybe it would be a good thing, they think. Peach’s parents, although dysfunctional, come across as unrealistic.

Then it happens. The perpetrator is outside Peach’s home. He swings from something --- so hard we think he’ll break in. He sends Peach a love letter. His presence is so unwanted but he’s forceful, unconcerned with what Peach wants and how much he hurt her. He is delusional and doesn’t go away.

Glass describes the aftermath of a rape, and post-traumatic stress disorder, with poetry that is at times more real than nonfiction. Through scattered and vibrant sentences, and the beats Glass’ words compose, the emotions of Peach seep into our psyche. Through Peach’s eyes, we see what a woman goes through after a sexual assault, and what it feels like to be followed and taunted. Lincoln writes letters and says Love. Yet he thinks love is something you can steal against a person’s will.

As Glass’ work comes to a close, we finally begin to trust those who are close to Peach. This is a brave novel, and a first-person narrative about the aftermath of a rape that is real and raw and deserves to be read.