Early on, I wasn't at all sure that Touch Grass was going to be for me. For a considerable portion of the novel, I struggled to find my way into it. Mary Colussi drops us into a strange near-future world without offering much assistance or explanation. Consciousness can spontaneously leave the body, people can pay to have their digital histories erased, genetically modified rabbits have become pests, Strawberries have disappeared, a corporation appears to control almost everything, and somewhere in the middle of it all is a sheep that can't die.
It's deliberately peculiar, occasionally bewildering and not immediately easy to connect with. For at least the first third, I felt as though I were standing outside the novel watching its collection of strange ideas move past me without quite understanding how they all slotted together.
I'm so very glad I persevered, because by approximately two-thirds of the way through, something shifted. The apparent absurdity began to reveal its purpose as the separate threads started drawing together and I became completely invested in Charlie’s story. What started off as a quirky and slightly crazy piece of speculative fiction developed into something far more uncomfortable.
Because beneath the immortal sheep, the pastel rabbits and the darkly comic observations is a theoretically frightening vision of where our relationship with technology could very well be taking us.
Charlie works for Fresh Start, which is a company that removes people’s most humiliating or unwanted moments from the internet. Things like a leaked photograph, an embarrassing video or a failed public performance can be made to disappear, so for clients willing and able to go further, an entire digital existence can be swept away.
What's ironic is that Charlie's spent years attempting to do something similar with her own life.
Her parents are dead, she's estranged from her sister and she keeps almost everyone at an emotional distance. She's constructed an existence that requires very little attachment, desire and vulnerability. Even before her consciousness begins leaving her body, Charlie's already profoundly disconnected from herself.
Her disembodiment is one of the novel’s strangest ideas, but it eventually becomes one of its most effective. Charlie’s consciousness spontaneously ejects from her physical form, leaving her body behind while she floats through the world or takes refuge inside another object. She's especially fond of inhabiting a cactus.
This seems, at first, this is completely comical, but as the phenomenon spreads, it becomes considerably darker. Governments fear it, and corporations recognise its potential. So, Charlie becomes valuable not because anyone is particularly concerned about what's happening to her, but because her experience could potentially be studied, controlled and ultimately exploited.
Which means that Charlie isn't treated as a person in need of help. She's treated as a resource.
The novel is remarkably thoughtful about the complicated relationship between memory and identity.
Forgetting isn't always a failure. It can be merciful and sometimes necessary, and no one can carry every experience with equal clarity forever. There are also compelling reasons why people should be allowed to remove damaging or exploitative material from public view.
But there's a difference between privacy and nonexistence.
Privacy protects a person’s right to possess an interior life. Total erasure risks removing the relationships, choices and experiences through which that person became themselves. If every mistake disappears, so might the evidence of growth. If every painful memory is removed, the relationships connected to it could become unintelligible.
Touch Grass doesn't offer a simplistic argument that nothing should ever be forgotten. Instead, it asks who controls the forgetting and who benefits when the past is changed.
The opening was an honest-to-goodness struggle. The world-building is delivered through implication rather than explanation, the humour is unusually dry and Charlie’s emotional detachment kept me at a distance. There are also so many ideas competing for attention that the novel can occasionally feel overfilled.
It asks us to consider artificial intelligence, corporate power, climate change, surveillance, memory, bodily autonomy, social media, parasocial relationships, childhood exploitation, grief, sisterhood and queer identity. And it asks us to consider all of this while still expecting us to accept a cactus-inhabiting consciousness and an immortal sheep.
That's a huge amount for one novel to carry.
But, the apparently chaotic content gradually becomes coherent. Details that once seemed included purely for absurdity acquire thematic significance. Charlie’s missing memories become more important, and the unusual footnotes begin to rupture the authority of the story itself. Her relationships with Lady, her housemate Ian and her estranged sister the bring emotional substance I initially thought was missing.
By the final third, I wasn't observing the story from a distance anymore. I wanted to understand what had been deleted, who'd benefited from the omissions and whether Charlie could reclaim the parts of herself she'd spent so long trying to discard.
The final developments caught me completely by surprise and encouraged me to rethink much of what had come before them.
Touch Grass required undoubtedly required a lot of patience from me, and I contemplated DNF'ing this book. It didn't immediately capture my attention and there were moments early in the novel when I wondered whether its particular mixture of absurdity, detachment and speculative philosophy would ever come together.
But, eventually, it did.
What I initially thought to be an eccentric story about a woman leaving her body, social media imprint management, and an animal that refuses to die became a much more serious examination of who owns our identities and what happens when the systems designed to record our lives obtain the power to rewrite them.
The future depicted in this book is frightening because it doesn't feel impossible. Colussi hasn't imagined a world that's completely removed from our own. She's taken our existing anxieties, such as AI, digital permanence, influencer culture, corporate surveillance and the loss of meaningful privacy, and has pushed them only a few steps further.
This isn't a novel I loved immediately, but it's one I respected more with every chapter and couldn't wait to discuss with fellow readers as soon as I was finished. Its ideas are ambitious, its humour is fabulously strange and its questions about memory, consent and personhood are far more uncomfortable than its quirky premise initially alludes to.
If you begin Touch Grass and find yourself uncertain, I'd encourage you to stay with it. The novel might take its time revealing what's really doing, but once it does, that immortal sheep becomes the least frightening thing in it.
🤖 Read this if you enjoy strange and thought-provoking speculative fiction
🌐 A near-future world shaped by AI, social media and corporate control
🫥 A woman whose consciousness begins spontaneously leaving her body
🧠 Memory, identity and the consequences of erasing the past
📱 Privacy, consent and the commodification of personal lives
🫶 Grief, sisterhood and learning to reconnect with yourself
⚠️ Contains grief, parental death, depression, dissociation, exploitation, surveillance and mental health concerns.
Book Details
Touch Grass by Mary Colussi
Paperback ISBN
978-1761358548 — Penguin Australian trade paperback edition published on 2 June 2026.
Hardcover ISBN
N/A — no English-language hardcover edition is currently listed by Penguin Random House Australia.
eBook ISBN
978-1761358555 — Penguin eBooks digital edition published on 2 June 2026.
Audiobook ISBN
978-1761358562 — Penguin Random House Australia Audio unabridged digital audiobook edition published on 2 June 2026.
Genre
Speculative Fiction; Literary Fiction; Contemporary Fiction; Australian Fiction; Science Fiction; Dystopian Fiction; Satirical Fiction
Subgenre
Near-Future Fiction; Technological Dystopia; Corporate Dystopia; Social Satire; Climate Fiction; Philosophical Science Fiction; Queer Speculative Fiction; Psychological Fiction; Absurdist Fiction; Black Comedy
Tropes / Literary Threads
Consciousness spontaneously leaving the body; emotionally detached protagonist; digital histories being erased; unreliable and manipulated memories; estranged sisters; influencer seeking anonymity; childhood commodified without consent.
Publisher
Penguin Random House Australia — the Australian trade paperback, eBook and digital audiobook editions were published on 2 June 2026.
Series
Standalone novel.
Formats Available
Trade Paperback; eBook; EPUB; Digital Audiobook.
Audiobook Narrator
Catherine Van Davies.
Audiobook Length
Approximately 9 hours 55 minutes — unabridged digital audiobook edition.
Original Release Date
2 June 2026 — Penguin first Australian publication.
Australian Release Date
2 June 2026 — Penguin trade paperback, digital and audiobook editions.
Page Count
336 pages — Penguin Australian trade paperback edition.
Where to Buy Touch Grass by Mary Colussi
📚 Amazon
Affiliate Disclosure
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. If you purchase through my Amazon affiliate links, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. I also encourage supporting Australian booksellers such as QBD Books, independent booksellers, and self-published authors whenever possible.
Danielle Robinson is a literary critic and writer whose
work explores literature through the
lens of atmosphere, memory, culture, and emotional experience. Holding a double degree in philosophy and theology, she combines academic insight with a deeply refined aesthetic sensibility shaped by more than three decades working across the creative industries as an internationally published, multi-award-winning makeup artist, fashion stylist, and interior stager.
She reads widely and rigorously, reading and reviewing more than 200 books each year as both an ARC reader and commissioned critic. Through Silk & Sentences, Danielle approaches literature as something immersive and lived with — not simply stories to consume, but works that shape the way we think, feel, and move through the world.
She writes from her semi-rural Queensland home, where she lives with Alex, her husband of 33 years, their dogs Oscar and Paige, and an ever-growing library of books.
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