On the cusp of thirty, Coral learns that a thing is growing inside her body. It is not necessarily a complete disaster, she tells herself. I’m okay, she tells herself. Soon the thing inside her is the size of a plum. ‘Little Plum,’ she says, ‘Little Plum, I love you.’ And she wants to love it, the little plum. It’s just that she can’t yet think of it as what it is becoming: a baby, and not just a piece of fruit. Coral is tapping and shrugging more than usual. She is trying to stop the creature in her head from taking hold. Coral might not be okay—or she might be seeing more clearly than anyone. Bold and sensuous, Little Plum is the stunning follow-up to Laura McPhee-Browne’s award-winning debut, Cherry Beach.
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“Coral hopes that she is not deliberately enigmatic, but rather that she takes time to show herself.”
An intricate and intimate portrait of unexpected motherhood, we follow Coral as she grapples with OCD and detachment throughout her pregnancy, and then with postpartum psychosis following the birth. Given the themes, there is an expected darkness to the novel, but we also find it enmeshed with a lightness and hope, all held together beautifully by McPhee-Browne's elegant, ethereal prose.