Review: Quite a Year for Plums

Quite a Year for Plums by Bailey White
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I usually enjoy humorous novels featuring eccentric Southerners. This one had the right parts, but it didn’t feel like it was put together by someone who wanted to tell a story. I could picture each chapter as a vignette on NPR Weekend Edition. They were written well, somewhat interesting, at times humorous, consumable in individual parts. But I found myself referring to the list of characters to try to figure out who was who throughout the book. So many characters sounded alike. And there’s no zany storyline going throughout, but plenty of short ones along the way. White seems a very good article-length writer with an eye on becoming the Tom Bodett of the South, or more likely something more literary. I see a mighty swing and a miss here. Worth the read, but I expect there are better swings than this.

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