Plum
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- USD 9.99
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- USD 9.99
Descripción editorial
“You wish to never see a plum again in your life… You think: When I am an adult, I will never have a fruit tree. I will never be like this.”
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Anderegg debuts with a tour de force of second-person narration. It begins with J in second grade, raised alongside her older brother by their alcoholic mother, who enables their father's physical abuse. J catalogs the rules she follows to keep the peace: "The rule is dinner on the table by 5:30.... The rule is make sure your friends don't come inside.... The rule is never tell anyone." But even these measures can't save her brother from regular beatings. When he leaves home, J is left to fend for herself, and she becomes a cam girl as a teenager. Her adulthood proves rocky as she contends with her childhood trauma ("It feels exactly the same as every other sad and hopeless tiring day") and holds out hope for her brother ("Where your brother lives the sky must be a bright bright blue. He must be warm. He must be having a nice sandwich for lunch. He must have moved on with his life"). 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.
