Plum & Jaggers

This is one of the best books about family I've read in a long time. The McWilliams siblings are wonderfully compelling characters, especially Sam, the oldest. Believing after losing his parents that only he can protect the family and keep it together, he becomes a playwright, pushing his brother and sisters to perform black comedy sketches about a family whose parents never show up for dinner. But the pressure he puts on them -- and the pressure of celebrity, once they start to become famous -- causes rifts between them, and forces Sam to reassess his own concept of family.Despite its humor, this is at heart a serious allegory about the latchkey children of absent boomer parents, and about the power of the imagination to allow us to reshape our world. The writing is subtle but fast-paced, and the ending is powerfully moving. A great and memorable book.

The power of Plum and Jaggers is how long after reading it I was still thinking about the characters and their story. Sam, as the eldest of four who were orphaned when their parents were blown up on a train, has the burden of protecting his siblings - even when and where they didn't need protection. His resiliency has its price in that he is troubled, overbearing, yet incredibly strong.This is a story of family values with an edge. As in an earlier book, A Country of Strangers, Susan Shreve is able to constantly link comedy and tragedy in a subtle yet provocative manner. She goes deeply into the psychology of her characters with a light flair. A great "book club" book.

Maybe awesome isn't the exact right word. Maybe awe-inspiring? Yeah, that's more like it. This book is hard to describe, which is fine, because I'm not writing this to describe it, but trust me when I say that the reading experience is like no other. It's more than just entering a world, and characters, and getting all caught up in it. It's just, well, beyond that somehow. Getting caught up and up and up-- it's just something you have to read. Because you'll emerge a better-thinking person, I swear, and not in a moralizing kind of way or anything. This book gave me insight into what great contemporary literature is supposed to be. Sublime and amazing at the same time!!

All of us in New York, of course, were disappointed to find out that Sam and Gio didn't fall in love and live happily ever after in Orvieto. Apart from its lovelessness, a very elegant read.

Susan Shreve has written a compelling, page turner of a book about the aftermath for children of terrorism. Remarkably, the book is sweet and decent. Part of its charm is the humaneness of its characters; there's a basic gentleness to them. The story is lively, suspenseful, moving and funny; and at the same time, it rings true about the effects of sudden parental loss on children, the ways it torques and warps the children's lives. Shreve's style is clean and restrained. The book is understated and well-written. A great summer read.