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For fans of Sarah Rose Etter and Scott McClanahan, Plum is a darkly beautiful, unflinching novel about modern girlhood in the internet age, the daily toll of trauma, and the limits of love.
Told entirely in the second person, Plum follows J as she grows from kid to teen in a house ruled by her alcoholic dad and complicit mother. Her older brother is sometimes wonderful, sometimes gross, and he's her only hope of getting out. J's world is one of nail polish, above-ground pools, and drive-thrus—and of violence, carelessness, and so many rules. J covets the peace that comes when she slips on her headphones, turns on her handheld radio, and dreams of how she and her brother can make their escape.
When her brother leaves home and disappears, so does J's best chance to flee her parents' chaotic orbit. Alone and angry, J reaches through her computer screen for the life she wants: blonde hair, glittering nails, attention, freedom. As she stumbles into adulthood with no template to follow, J must figure out how to build a family for herself full of the love she deserves. In her brutally compelling debut, Anderegg turns her singular gaze on the generational patterns of addiction and abuse.
"Anderegg debuts with a tour de force of second-person narration. As J scrapes together a measure of sanity and stability, the story culminates in a triumph of endurance and love. Anderegg's depiction of familial dysfunction and its lasting effects is pitch-perfect." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"This debut novel is told entirely in the second person, a bold move that injects the story with a special sort of hypersensitivity. Anderegg delicately considers the strange hollowness [...] of having the freedom and tools to find happiness, but nursing a shot nervous system and a crooked view of relationships. Yet, the book insists that nurture (or lack thereof) is not all there is. Anderegg's novel outlives its pages." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Even with such a spare plot, Anderegg has created a beautiful page-turner with an unforgettable perspective." —Booklist
"[A] wise and touching novel. Written entirely in the second person, the book captures J's sharp, brooding interior thoughts. She has a powerful command of details and startling discernment. Insightful, witty, and uplifting." —Foreword Reviews
"Andy Anderegg must have had her whole heart in her hands when she wrote this beautiful, devastating book about loss and abuse and siblinghood and survival. The language and style are so fully her own, a new exhilarating voice, you won't be able to stop reading. I couldn't. I inhaled it." —Deb Olin Unferth, author of Barn 8
"Plum is a truly original, tender, and heart-searing novel about the secrets we keep, all the ways a soul can be broken, and the lies we have to tell ourselves to move on. Andy Anderegg so beautifully captures the wrenching pain and wild joys of growing up and learning how to survive, and how to make a real, big life for yourself. I will never stop thinking about this book, it's forever imprinted on my heart." —Crissy Van Meter, author of Creatures
This information about Plum was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Andy Anderegg was born in Austin, Texas and lives in Los Angeles, California. She holds a BA from the University of Oklahoma and an MFA from the University of Kansas. Her fiction has been shortlisted for the Dzanc Books' Prize for Fiction and named a finalist for The Clay Reynolds Novella Prize from Texas Review Press.
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