FireBlade Book Review: The Desert Peach

Review by Jerry Stratton, 5/27/2001

“If we lose, we can always say we came in second. Want some tea?”

Daniel Pinkwater described them as “Hogan’s Heroes with Homos” in the introduction to the first collection. This is, well, that’s probably the best description you’re going to get.

Recommendation: Purchase
Writer: Donna Barr
Rating: 7

Manfred Pfirsich Marie Rommel is Erwin Rommel’s younger brother, the Desert Peach to Erwin’s Desert Fox. He’s a handsome, well-dressed, aryan who always knows how to maintain posture, hold his tea, and have wild sex with aviators. Despite Donna’s misgivings, it was brilliant from the start. The Peach takes the Fox to a picnic and enemy fire destroys his favorite china. The Desert Peach captures a Hawaiian soldier, and the Desert Fox takes them all surfing to look for enemy submarines. Hilarious stuff. But, believe it or not, you’re going to get caught up in the characters as well. The Peach’s command includes the sorriest misfits ever to venture into literature, lost puppies who Donna gets you feeling for, even though we beat the crap out of them, or because we beat the crap out of them. These books are not to be missed. I cannot recommend them highly enough. If you don’t have them already, get them.

You’ll need to look for the collections: early issues have become honest-to-God collector’s items. Probably because they didn’t print that many. Who wants an overstock on gay Nazis? Even some of the early collections are no longer available on-line.

The collections are “The Beginnings”, which reprints the first issues, and “Politics, Pilots, and Puppies”, and “Foreign Relations”. After that, Barr began publishing larger issues less often, and each issue is itself available.

There is also an issue of “Peach Slices”, which collects some otherwise unpublished short stories about the Peach. (If you think the “normal” Peach stories are risqué, you probably want to say away from this one! But if you want to see Pfirsich and Rosen in the sack in “for the glory of greater Germany”, hunt this collection down.)

Finally, “Ersatz Peach” is a collection of Peach stories written by people other than Donna Barr. Barb Rausch, R.L. Crabb, Matt Howarth, and Trina Robbins, among many others, all contribute tales of the Peach “mythos”. None of them are canon, but what the hell does that word mean when it comes to Donna Barr? They’re good stories.

Recommendation: Purchase

Web Page for The Desert Peach

The Beginnings (ISBN: 1883847133)
Buy Politics, Pilots, and Puppies at Amazon!
Foreign Relations (ISBN: 1883847044)
Baby Games (ISBN: 1883847052)
Buy Belief Systems at Amazon!
Buy Marriage & Mayhem at Amazon!
Buy Miki at Amazon!
Buy New and Different at Amazon!
Buy Tongue at Amazon!
Buy Ersatz Peach at Amazon!
Search for more items by Donna Barr

Talk about it	Usenet Reviews	Talk about Donna Barr
Other items of interest: The Ruling Class; Cabaret; King of Hearts; One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; The Tin Drum; Hitler’s Last Courier; Idiots, Imbeciles, and Morons; Memoirs Found in a Bathtub; Moonshadow; The Futurological Congress; The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy;

Comments?

If you have comments or questions about this page, please, leave a message on the Negative Space Comments Page.

Negative Space

Jerry

“Omnipotence is most omnipotent when one does nothing!” answered the machine. “You climb to reach the summit, but once there, discover that all roads lead down!”
--Stanislaw Lem (The Cyberiad)

In Association with Amazon.Com