Quite a Year for Plums : A Novel

New Yorker

'Sometimes you don't need to tell the truth,' Eula says to her mad-at-the-world son,Tom. 'Sometimes you just need to let the truth alone.' White, a commentator on National Public Radio, has in her broadcasts perfect a tone of pungent hilarity. In her mordant, interlocking stories, set in rural Georgia, the characters (who are, variously, lovelorn, hounded, loyal, and on the alert for aliens) turn out to dispense un unexpected measure of common sense.

Library Journal

The women in town are worried about Roger, the peanut virologist. Hilma and Meade discuss him at their weekly readings. Eula frets over his welfare, not to mention his appetite. And everyone else just seems to be content with giving opinions on his budding romance with the strange bird artist, Della. National Public Radio commentator and best-selling short story writer White (Sleeping at the Starlite Motel) will make the reader care about this nurturing gaggle of women and other community members in a small, sleepy town in southern Georgia. There's the obsessed typographer who feels personally called to save vanishing typefaces. Helping him is Louise, who thinks letters and string will entice creatures from outer space. In the meantime, Louise's daughter Ethel, who left peanut virologist Roger, involves herself in brief relationships with an eccentric electric fan collector and a boat builder. This is not just for those readers interested in small-town tales but for anyone wishing to enjoy a charming story of human relations. One hopes that White has more novels to come. -- Shannon Haddock
-- Kate Kelly, Treadwell Lib., Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston

Library Journal

The women in town are worried about Roger, the peanut virologist. Hilma and Meade discuss him at their weekly readings. Eula frets over his welfare, not to mention his appetite. And everyone else just seems to be content with giving opinions on his budding romance with the strange bird artist, Della. National Public Radio commentator and best-selling short story writer White (Sleeping at the Starlite Motel) will make the reader care about this nurturing gaggle of women and other community members in a small, sleepy town in southern Georgia. There's the obsessed typographer who feels personally called to save vanishing typefaces. Helping him is Louise, who thinks letters and string will entice creatures from outer space. In the meantime, Louise's daughter Ethel, who left peanut virologist Roger, involves herself in brief relationships with an eccentric electric fan collector and a boat builder. This is not just for those readers interested in small-town tales but for anyone wishing to enjoy a charming story of human relations. One hopes that White has more novels to come. -- Shannon Haddock

Booknews

Third novel by the wise, witty National Public Radio commentator. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

The New Yorker

'Sometimes you don't need to tell the truth,' Eula says to her mad-at-the-world son,Tom. 'Sometimes you just need to let the truth alone.' White, a commentator on National Public Radio, has in her broadcasts perfect a tone of pungent hilarity. In her mordant, interlocking stories, set in rural Georgia, the characters (who are, variously, lovelorn, hounded, loyal, and on the alert for aliens) turn out to dispense un unexpected measure of common sense.

Kirkus Reviews

Offering her well-known insight into humanity's quirks, NPR commentator White (Sleeping at the Starlite Motel) makes the Georgia romance between an ardent plant pathologist and a flighty painter of birds the centerpiece of her first novel. Roger knows his way around a field of peanuts, but he fares less well in love. When his wife Ethel runs off with a Nashville musician (then dumps him for a New Hampshire boatwright), it ends the marriage but doesn't sever ties to Roger's in-laws, who continue to think of him as family. So it's only natural that Roger is called on to help when Louise, Ethel's mom, starts fretting about extraterrestrial visitors and getting lost after wandering from home. And it's only natural, too, that the in-laws grow concerned when Roger shows an interest in a woman who, in a series of trips, brings nearly all of her household possessions to the dump, with a tidy note attached to each item. Della is an artist, and not a bad one, it turns out, whose dumpside sorties are caused by aesthetic despair: She just can't manage to paint an old breed of chickens to her liking. After a fashion, she returns Roger's affection, and the two conduct a courtship of sorts while much else goes on around them, Louise moves in with a typographer who appreciates her unique approach to letters; Ethel continues to play the field; Roger's childhood horse succumbs to old age; camellias bloom; and thrips spread a deadly virus to the area's peanut crop. All told, life in rural Georgia undergoes change in not-so-subtle ways. At end, Della flies away to Australia in search of new birds to paint, leaving lonely local hero Roger to carry on with his work. The pages resonate withWhite's distinctive voice and dazzle with her naturalist's eye for detail, making the strictly episodic nature of this tale less a drawback than a continuation of her familiar storytelling habits.