Customer Reviews

Quite a Year for Plums: A novel

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(21)

 

 

Bailey White writes a very small, understated story that takes place in a little south Georgia town. The joy of reading this book is spending time with a very unusual cast of characters...a peanut disease specialist, wildlife artist, collector of electric fans, to name just a few. While reading, you get to watch, unobserved, the comings and goings of these quirky people, as they go about the business of their lives. This is a beautifully written book. It's funny and witty, especially the dialogue. How wonderful to spend time with these people. Ms White doesn't disappoint.

Reading Quite a Year for Plums is like walking among the residents of a small town, becoming part of their lives and they part of yours, without ever being seen. Bailey White has an uncanny knack for creating characters that come alive. When I finished reading Quite a Year for Plums I was left with the same empty feeling in the pit of my stomach that I had the day I moved from my childhood home in rural Virginia.

Like moving to a new locale, it takes a while to get to know each of the characters. My only criticism of the novel is that during the first few chapters I often found the need to refer to the list of characters. When I purchased the book, I believed that a cast list for a relatively short novel was presumptuous. I later learned that it was a necessity.

I highly recommend Quite a Year for Plums, as well as Mama Makes Up her Mind and Sleeping at the Starlite Motel.

I loved this book from start to finish. Life isn't about plot, it's about the little events that shape your life each day. Sometimes you can only see the plot when you get to the end and look backwards, and I think that's the style captured so gracefully here. It's a book with no heroes, no villans, just people with fragile human hearts. The humor is very dry, you will miss it if you aren't paying attention. But the effortless storytelling is very engaging.

If you want something to HAPPEN, if you want some grand GESTURE, and if you have to have everything about life EXPLAINED to you before it makes sense, pass on this book. If you like sitting on the porch with a good friend and listening to the events of their day over a glass of iced tea, then this book will suit you. It's about being in the company of quality people, and knowing that whatever they say will be worth the time to listen.

Bailey White's latest is a masterful recreation of the people and places that make up the North Florida, South Georgia region. Her sense of place is sure and strong and her words took me right back to places I have known and loved. Sure, not much happens in the book, but the people were mostly real for me and I empathized with their frailties and shortcomings in their attempts to care about each other. I found the book relaxing and evocative of another way of life.

I realize I'm coming to the game late, since this book has already had 61 reviews over the past 5 years with an average rating of 3 stars, but I just can't resist sharing my disappointment with this "novel." Having been a long-time fan of Bailey White's picturesque vignettes on NPR and in her story collections (Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Sleeping at the Starlite Motel), I was delighted to come across a paperback copy of this book at a local thrift store for $1.00. In retrospect, I fear that I overspent. The publisher's use of the word "novel" is misleading in the extreme, for this book is simply a collection of scenes of southern life held together loosely by a cast of mostly forgettable characters (thus the critical need for the list of characters at the front of the book - you'll need it!). While it is true that each of our lives may be filled with a variety of odd or dysfunctional family, friends, and acquaintances exactly like those in this book, to build a book around such characters requires more than a simple narrative description of their quirks to hold a reader's attention for 200+ pages. As some other reviewers have noted, the book is not without its moments, e.g., a couple of old ladies helping a widow friend spread her long dead husband's cremated ashes; a man's obsessive passion for collecting vintage electric fans; a woman's personal conviction that aliens are monitoring our every move; the city folks who move to the country for peace and quiet, only to find themselves completely out of their element. Each might have made a delightful literary sketch in and of itself, but stringing them together in a vaguely chronological order and calling the results a Novel, is quite unfair to both the reader and Ms White, the writer. There is no plot, no real character development, no climax, no denouement, and, in the end, no satisfaction for the reader. The book just stops, as if Ms. White simply got tired of writing or lost her train of thought. The characters are left dangling, their fates unknown and unknowable, and, perhaps, saddest of all, leaving the reader with no desire to know or care about what happens to them. I don't know that I can ascribe "boring" to the book, as several reviewers have done, but I did find myself feeling grateful that the ordeal was finally over when I finished the last page. Having had the opportunity to meet Ms. White in person and having enjoyed her readings and stories for many years, I was profoundly disappointed at my sense of relief in reaching the end of the book. I believe that a great book will always leave you wanting more, wanting to continue your relationship with the characters (for example, try The Midnight Examiner by William Kotzwinkle), but I was as tired of these characters as they seemed to be with their own mundane, hum-drum existance. If this book is your first exposure to Bailey White, do not, I repeat, DO NOT allow it to color your opinion of her body of work because this book is atypical of her customary brilliance as a story teller.

Not what I hoped for; certainly not what I expected from the glowing reviews, nor from my previous experiences with Ms. White's writing. The characters are confusing to sort out (any non-Russian novel which begins with a character list should immediately be suspect), not simply because of their sound-alike names but because they are all so equally flat that no one character ever distinguishes itself from another in the reader's mind. Ms. White is a superior essayist, and unfortunately, has written this novel as if it, too, were a series of essays. No character development, no plot to speak of and no one to care about by the end of the book. Quite a Year For Plums is a lemon.

Characters that gently flow with each changing of the season. There was a soothing quality to the pace of the story that the reader absorbs, especially from the elderly characters. Scenes are centered around the cycle of nature so anyone who has gardened, lived on a farm or had a parent to care for, will especially appreciate the manner in which life and people are shown. I closed the book gently with a sigh and wanted more.

When I began the audio edition of this book, I was taken aback by Bailey White's whispery, "old lady" voice, which still surprises me. But in short order it became clear that her voice and her fictional world blended perfectly and only added to the beauty of the tale. I may, of course, as a long-time resident of Tallahassee, FL, be biased, but I was charmed by the eccentric backwoodsiness of the book's characters. We come to know the bird artist who throws out her possessions as an inspiration to her painting; the fan-man, to whom a 1910 GE electric fan represents perfection; the typographer, who values the juxtaposition of letters more than his wife; Roger, the peanut expert whose portrait between two peanut plants is a recurring theme in the book; and of course the several charming old ladies whose knowledge of south Georgia flora and fauna is encyclopedic. But none of these brief descriptions really give the rich, delicious flavor of the world in which all these folk live. Any one of these characters would enrich an ordinary book. To find them all in one place is extraordinary.

This slim volume has been criticized for lack of plot, but I think the plot is rich and deep. It is not, however, a dramatic, fast-paced, "page turner" type plot. Rather, we are given a glimpse into one year in the life of an extraordinary community. When the year is ended, life in the community goes on, no better and no worse than before, but unfortunately, without an audience to drink it in.

In reading other's reviews it seems people either love or hate this book. For me, it spoke directly to my heart, soul and funny bone. I first listened to it on audio cassette, then read it. Both times I found myself smiling or laughing aloud throughout. Her writing is superb. Her characters were deftly drawn. The plot was subtle. She clearly understands one of the primary premises of writing: show don't tell. Perhaps you have to grow up in a certain place or time to click with this book. (rural America with eccentric relatives and neighors)

I just finished reading the book. It was slow and probably like real southern country life. But I had to be wide awake to read it because there were so many characters introduced and I regularly got confused as to which was which. The author never developed any character in any depth.