In a nonspecific future, the pastel pelts of genetically modified rabbits are bounties for children, scientists have just discovered the Animal That Cannot Die, and Charlie keeps leaving her body. Sometimes merely to float, other times to inhabit whatever or whoever is nearby, including a cactus, which she prefers. By day, she spends her working hours scrubbing people’s shame from the internet: a debut author’s fourth novel, a gaggle of tech bros’ viral Zoom call, leaked nudes and AI slop, leaving nothing behind but the acknowledgement that Something Was Here. Charlie’s life is a bit like that, a collection of absences – the parents who died in a car accident, the sister she no longer speaks to. It’s not that she’s deprived, but when you don’t enjoy food, or sex, or the company of almost anyone, there are simply fewer things you need.

Even her work is just work: a means to keep going. Her newest client is a rare full sweep, erasing an entire internet presence, permanently. Sold into social media influencerhood at conception, Lady Lakes has had every second of her childhood and adulthood recorded and disseminated, and now she wants to disappear. But Charlie’s out-of-body episodes are getting harder to hide, and despite years of self-isolation, the few people who know her – Lady, her boss and her hermit housemate – are starting to notice.

Mary Colussi’s 2025 Penguin Literary Prize-winning debut deftly avoids the pitfalls of the genre, producing neither an unrecognisable speculative future nor the kind of preachy innovation-to-extremes inspired by Black Mirror and its ilk. Instead, Colussi presents us with a delicately realised vision of a world so familiar you could wake up there tomorrow. Fundamentally, Touch Grass isn’t about a terrifying techno-future; it’s about identity, shame, body neutrality, privacy and the steep but sometimes justifiable cost of being known.