Meg - Maurice Gee

The second book in the Plum trilogy.

The three novels Plumb, Meg and Sole Survivor are a family saga unrivalled by anything in New Zealand literature.

In Plumb, Gee introduces us to the intolerant, irascible clergyman George Plumb. It won the New Zealand Fiction Award and the Wattie Book of the Year Award.

Meg continues the family story with George Plumb's daughter, articulating her personal battles against a backdrop of family traumas and world wars.

Meg is the youngest of the Plum children. Emotionally dominated by her family – the terrifying George Plum, a man driven to extremity by his wayward conscience; a loving exhausted mother; her flawed and contradictory brothers and sisters – Meg is the one who cares best.

For fifty years she watches as they grow up into a New Zealand of the Depression and post-war boom, lovingly gathering up the harvest of their lives – and deaths – in this harshly tender, passionate quest to uncover the truth about them… and herself.

The third book, Sole Survivor, focuses on the career of Duggie Plum, Plumb's grandson, as seen through the eyes of his cousin Raymond Sole, who sharpens the story of his own doomed marriage against that of his relationship to Duggie.

Fabre and Fabre, 1981 (in association with Penguin).  Hardback, first edition, 252 pages. 

Condition: secondhand hardback in very good condition. Dust jacket chipped in two places at the top (spine and front right side of cover).