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Plumb (novel series)

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The Plumb trilogy
  • Plumb
  • Meg
  • Sole Survivor
AuthorMaurice Gee
LanguageNew Zealand English
GenreFamily saga
Publisher
Published1978–1983

The Plumb trilogy is a series of three novels written by New Zealand author Maurice Gee: Plumb (1978),[1] Meg (1981),[2] and Sole Survivor (1983).[3] The trilogy follows the lives of a New Zealand family across three generations, exploring the impacts of history, politics and religion on the family, and has been described by New Zealand writers and literary critics as one of the greatest achievements in New Zealand literature.[4][5][6]

Background and overview

Gee's grandfather James Chapple, the inspiration for the character George Plumb

Gee began writing Plumb in 1976, at age 45, after moving from Auckland to Nelson with his wife and family and earning a Literary Fund Scholarship that allowed him to begin writing full-time. He had wanted to write a novel about his grandfather, controversial Presbyterian minister James Chapple, for many years.[7][8] The character George Plumb is closely based on Chapple, particularly his early life, his trials for heresy and seditious utterance and subsequent imprisonment, although Gee gave Plumb "three months more in jail" because "14 months seemed to fit better into my time scheme than 11 months".[7] In the author's note to the novel, Gee further explains that Plumb's character, career, opinions, and early life with his wife, are much like his grandfather's own history, but that Plumb's domestic life and children are "largely imaginary".[1]: 272 

The first novel is narrated by the eighty-year-old George Plumb, not in chronological order but by looking back through his own memories, and covering the 1890s to the 1940s. He is a Presbyterian clergyman with an unyielding and stern personality and a strong belief in his own principles, who becomes a pacifist and rationalist, and he and his late wife Edie had twelve children. His beliefs lead to sacrifices being made both by himself and his family, and to a fractured relationship with his children. The second novel, Meg, is narrated by George's youngest daughter Meg (based on Gee's own mother), and is a coming of age or Bildungsroman novel. The third novel is about Meg's son, Raymond Sole, a journalist, and his relationship with his cousin Duggie Plumb, a corrupt politician. The trilogy is largely set in Henderson, in West Auckland, where Gee grew up.[4][8]

Publication history

Plumb was published in London by Faber and Faber in 1978,[1] and in Auckland by Oxford University Press in 1979.[9] Contemporary reviews were positive. David Dowling, writing in the New Zealand literary journal Landfall, called it a "fine novel, Gee's best so far", and felt it signalled "a new maturity in New Zealand fiction".[10] In the United Kingdom, Martin Seymour-Smith, reviewing the novel for the Financial Times, noted the inspiration of Chapple, and said he suspected that much of the novel's power came "from the fact that Maurice Gee is trying to seek out the good in a man with whose fundamental precepts he is in disagreement". He praised the novel's ending as "perfect".[11] Nina Bawden for the Daily Telegraph observed that, while "the history of the moral struggles of a Presbyterian Minister in New Zealand does not sound very enticing", it made for "unexpectedly riveting reading".[12]

Despite selling well by the standards of New Zealand fiction,[13] sales figures from Plumb were not enough for Gee to live off, so he branched out into children's books and television writing.[7] He did, however, complete the sequels Meg, published in 1981, and Sole Survivor, published in 1983. Both novels were well-reviewed. David Hill, reviewing Meg, felt it was an "immensely satisfying work", speaking in "what is unmistakably a new voice".[14] He subsequently reviewed Sole Survivor as well, highlighting the many strengths of the three novels and in particular their examination "of the fortitude, the brevity, and much of the destruction in well-meaning lives".[15]

In addition to being published in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, Meg and Sole Survivor were also published in the United States by St Martin's Press, in 1981[16] and 1983 respectively.[17] Kirkus Reviews noted the difficulty in reviewing Meg when Plumb had not been published in the United States, but said the reader would "slowly warm" to the story, especially to Meg, and that it was "far more subtle and thoughtful than most family sagas".[18] It said of Sole Survivor that "Gee comes across as a gently unsentimental, especially economical observer of lives ... with a clear-headed realism about human motive that's steadily appealing and frequently even moving".[19] Michael Leapman in the New York Times was less impressed, saying that to appreciate Sole Survivor a reader would have to have "a familiarity with New Zealand politics since 1950 and a taste for the sordid".[20]

In 1995, the trilogy was published in a single volume by Penguin Books.[21]

Awards and legacy

Plumb is considered one of the best novels ever written in New Zealand.[22] It won the 1978 James Tait Black Memorial Prize in the UK,[23] and the top prize for fiction at both the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards and the New Zealand Book Awards in 1979.[24]

The series continues to be widely read in New Zealand. In 2006, the trilogy came second in a poll run by The Dominion Post of readers' favourite New Zealand books of the past 30 years, second only to the collected autobiography of Janet Frame.[25] In 2018, fifty New Zealand literary experts voted Plumb to be the best New Zealand novel of the last fifty years.[6] In response, Gee said: "I don’t think 'top' can be measured but it's good to know that Plumb is remembered and that people enjoy it. Actually, I can be more enthusiastic than that: I'm chuffed."[6]

References

  1. ^ a b c Gee, Maurice (1978). Plumb. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-11279-X.
  2. ^ Gee, Maurice (1981). Meg. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-11783-3.
  3. ^ Gee, Maurice (1983). Sole Survivor. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-13017-7.
  4. ^ a b Wattie, Nelson (2006). "Plumb". In Robinson, Roger; Wattie, Nelson (eds.). The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acref/9780195583489.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-1917-3519-6. OCLC 865265749. Retrieved 21 November 2020.
  5. ^ Stringer, Jenny, ed. (2005). "Gee, Maurice". The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature in English. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-1917-2757-3. Retrieved 28 November 2020.
  6. ^ a b c "The 50 best New Zealand books of the past 50 years: The official listicle". The Spinoff. 14 May 2018. Retrieved 21 November 2020.
  7. ^ a b c Johnston, Andrew (3 July 1993). "Maurice Gee: Our Superb Storyteller". The Evening Post. Retrieved 28 November 2020.
  8. ^ a b Matthews, Philip (6 October 2018). "Maurice Gee on his mother's thwarted writing career, his messy adolescence and how he met the love of his life". Stuff.co.nz. Retrieved 28 November 2020.
  9. ^ Gee, Maurice (1979). Plumb. Auckland, NZ: Oxford University Press in association with Faber and Faber. ISBN 978-0-1955-8054-9.
  10. ^ Dowling, David (March 1979). "Review". Landfall. 33 (1): 80. Retrieved 28 November 2020.
  11. ^ Seymour-Smith, Martin (4 November 1978). "Games of Chance". Financial Times. No. 27, 706.
  12. ^ Bawden, Nina (9 November 1978). "Recent Fiction". The Daily Telegraph. No. 38, 393.
  13. ^ James, Trevor (1996). "Beyond Realism: Maurice Gee and a Critical Praxis". Journal of New Zealand Literature (14): 111. Retrieved 30 November 2020.
  14. ^ Hill, David (March 1982). "Reviews – Maurice Gee". Landfall. 36 (1): 103. Retrieved 28 November 2020.
  15. ^ Hill, David (September 1983). "Reviews – Maurice Gee". Landfall. 37 (3): 375. Retrieved 30 November 2020.
  16. ^ Gee, Maurice (1981). Meg. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-3125-2861-4.
  17. ^ Gee, Maurice (1983). Sole Survivor (1st U.S. ed.). New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-3127-4261-4.
  18. ^ "Meg". Kirkus Reviews. February 1981. Retrieved 30 November 2020.
  19. ^ "Sole Survivor". Kirkus Reviews. September 1983. Retrieved 30 November 2020.
  20. ^ Leapman, Michael (15 January 1984). "Comic Failure, Grim Obsession". New York Times. Retrieved 30 November 2020.
  21. ^ Gee, Maurice (1995). The Plumb Trilogy. Auckland, NZ: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-1402-4798-5.
  22. ^ Wattie, Nelson (2006). "Gee, Maurice". In Robinson, Roger; Wattie, Nelson (eds.). The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acref/9780195583489.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-1917-3519-6. OCLC 865265749. Retrieved 21 November 2020.
  23. ^ "Fiction winners – Winners of the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction". University of Edinburgh. Retrieved 28 November 2020.
  24. ^ "Past Winners: 1979". New Zealand Book Awards. Retrieved 28 November 2020.
  25. ^ Somerset, Guy (16 September 2006). "Our favourite NZ books of the past 30 years". The Dominion Post. p. ID4.
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