Quite A Year For Plums

Quite A Year For Plums
-by Bailey White
220 pages (1998)
 

Whimsical and witty…two words I would definitely not hesitate to use in description of this enjoyable little novel by Bailey White. 

Quite A Year For Plums dwells on the slightly off-center antics of small town citizens in south Georgia, and boasts an array of characters who breathe life into every-day occurrences. There’s Roger, a quiet peanut pathologist who is a bit of an unlikely hometown celebrity. There’s Meade and Eula, two elderly spinsters who believe it is their sole purpose in life to protect “their” Roger from having his heart broken…again. Then there’s somewhat subdued and eccentric Della –an artist who is obsessed with painting painstakingly detailed portraits of birds– who Roger falls head over peanuts for. 

Without even meeting Della, the peanut pathologist is captivated by the mysterious yet practical notes the artist leaves on the perfectly useful things she leaves at the community dump (“This fan works, but it makes a clicking sound and will not oscillate”, “If you’re tall maybe this lamp won’t shine in your eyes”). 

There’s not much else to say about Plums except that I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of this simple yet touching novel. It honestly put a smile on my face with nearly every turn of the page and had me saying to myself almost enviously, “Why couldn'’t I have thought of that?”