One character seems to be taking care of everybody while her son is pessimistic about people and everything around him. A peanut professor is well-known in this close-knit society and appears to be on good terms with all the women. The outsiders who come to live or vacation in the community also show up with their very own oddities. Agriculture is the main theme and nearly all the main characters are adept in the field. There is not a real ending to the stories of all these people but the narration of each person's eccentricities and of every happening is quite realistically amusing. They accept each other's behavior and go on with life as they know how. One comforting factor about Ms. White's writing is that she doesn't dwell on the sensitivity of a matter too much, for example, a broken heart; but she is still able to move from one event to another easily with much clarity. A lot could happen in a year and Ms. White captures the moments with precision and saves the best, the plums, for last.

This is my first exposure to Bailey White and after having read some of the other reviews of this book I am inclined to try her one more time. It couldn't get worse. The lack of plot was disturbing. She was going nowhere and was getting there. So many characters and for what? Slow and plodding with periodic tangents. There was no meat to this book. I was so glad it was over and honestly I didn't care if Roger ever did fall in love again. What a letdown.

I realize I'm coming to the game late, since this book has already had 61 reviews over the past 5 years with an average rating of 3 stars, but I just can't resist sharing my disappointment with this "novel." Having been a long-time fan of Bailey White's picturesque vignettes on NPR and in her story collections (Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Sleeping at the Starlite Motel), I was delighted to come across a paperback copy of this book at a local thrift store for $1.00. In retrospect, I fear that I overspent. The publisher's use of the word "novel" is misleading in the extreme, for this book is simply a collection of scenes of southern life held together loosely by a cast of mostly forgettable characters (thus the critical need for the list of characters at the front of the book - you'll need it!). While it is true that each of our lives may be filled with a variety of odd or dysfunctional family, friends, and acquaintances exactly like those in this book, to build a book around such characters requires more than a simple narrative description of their quirks to hold a reader's attention for 200+ pages. As some other reviewers have noted, the book is not without its moments, e.g., a couple of old ladies helping a widow friend spread her long dead husband's cremated ashes; a man's obsessive passion for collecting vintage electric fans; a woman's personal conviction that aliens are monitoring our every move; the city folks who move to the country for peace and quiet, only to find themselves completely out of their element. Each might have made a delightful literary sketch in and of itself, but stringing them together in a vaguely chronological order and calling the results a Novel, is quite unfair to both the reader and Ms White, the writer. There is no plot, no real character development, no climax, no denouement, and, in the end, no satisfaction for the reader. The book just stops, as if Ms. White simply got tired of writing or lost her train of thought. The characters are left dangling, their fates unknown and unknowable, and, perhaps, saddest of all, leaving the reader with no desire to know or care about what happens to them. I don't know that I can ascribe "boring" to the book, as several reviewers have done, but I did find myself feeling grateful that the ordeal was finally over when I finished the last page. Having had the opportunity to meet Ms. White in person and having enjoyed her readings and stories for many years, I was profoundly disappointed at my sense of relief in reaching the end of the book. I believe that a great book will always leave you wanting more, wanting to continue your relationship with the characters (for example, try The Midnight Examiner by William Kotzwinkle), but I was as tired of these characters as they seemed to be with their own mundane, hum-drum existance. If this book is your first exposure to Bailey White, do not, I repeat, DO NOT allow it to color your opinion of her body of work because this book is atypical of her customary brilliance as a story teller.

I loved this book from start to finish. Life isn't about plot, it's about the little events that shape your life each day. Sometimes you can only see the plot when you get to the end and look backwards, and I think that's the style captured so gracefully here. It's a book with no heroes, no villans, just people with fragile human hearts. The humor is very dry, you will miss it if you aren't paying attention. But the effortless storytelling is very engaging.
If you want something to HAPPEN, if you want some grand GESTURE, and if you have to have everything about life EXPLAINED to you before it makes sense, pass on this book. If you like sitting on the porch with a good friend and listening to the events of their day over a glass of iced tea, then this book will suit you. It's about being in the company of quality people, and knowing that whatever they say will be worth the time to listen.

It's one thing to make your readers work, but it's another to make the reader work, and then for nothing.

Thank goodness I got this from the library. White may be good on NPR, but she's definitely not good here. The first chapters had me referring constantly to the list of characters, simply because White throws you a new name every other paragraph. With other books, this isn't a problem, the problem here is the author seems to give us the names, but no other information. Sure, there's dialogue, but I need some kind of identifying characteristic, White! Tell me if their eyes are blue, brown, are they tall, short, thin, have hair, no hair, STUFF!!! It was a pain getting through the first few chapters. I had trouble remembering who was who. The other thing that adds to the difficulty is the fact that there seems to be no plot. (Makes it even harder to remember who's trying to accomplish what) AND, because there's no "plot", halfway through the book, after a fund-raising picnic and a bird art exhibition, I started to wonder what was the point of all this, then I stopped wondering and returned the book to the library.