Plum & Jaggers

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, but leaves a lot to the imagination
Review: PLum & Jaggers is the story of four children left as orphans when their parents are tragically killed in a train explosion in Italy. They go on to live with their elderly grandparents, and experience among them juvenile deliquency, a stalker, and in the case of one, and all consuming fear of terrorism and bombing. Sounds like the makings of a comedy troupe, doesn't it? But that's exactly what the four McWilliams children do. While the book is entertaining, it leaves many qestions unanswered. Why are the comedy sketches so funny? There are small hints about the set up, but no pieces of dialogue. And the scenes they set don't sound all that funny. I wanted to know who the stalker was. Was it Sam McWilliams arch nemesis from childhood? Or was it an admirer of Julia? Plum & Jaggers is an interesting examination of what happens to children when they are exposed to tragedy at such a young age, but it left a lot to be desired.

Rating:
Summary: a moving novel of love and family
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: This is no Hotel New Hampshire.
Review: Yes, the book is well written, and it has an easy yet elegant flow. However, there are many hanging threads that don't get resolved:

The fact that four brothers and sisters are still living together way into their thirties and late twenties was hard to swallow. Except for towards the end, where things begin to unravel, there was never any conflict among them.

Other than Oliver, who had a girlfriend while in Chicago, the other three were probably still virgins.

I can understand the devastation that the older kids (especially Sam) may have suffered when their parents died, but the youngest two were pretty oblivious, yet they exhibited the same maladjusted traits of Sam.

The grandparents had strong and well-defined personalities. I do not buy that the children received such a minimal impact in their upbringing from them. The way they developed as adults, it's almost like they grew up in a vacuum with Sam as the figurehead.

We never find out what happened with Julia's stalker. If it truly was Sam's old childhood friend, why was he so obsessed? There was never any resolution. Julia keeps living in NY (not scared anymore), but the stalker never resurfaces.

For a group of hilarious actors and writers, they certainly lived very dreadful lives. There is zero humor in the book.

I couldn't imagine a TV comedy based on four people sitting at a table for 30 minutes being any fun. As a theatrical troupe, maybe, but not on NBC.

The author could have dissipated my doubts by introducing some of the comedy dialog in the book, but that never happened. There was nothing more offensive than reading about how funny Sam's writing was, but never seeing proof.