REVIEW

In the novelette Wild Plums, Patricia Q. Bidar treats readers to a nuanced story about twenty-something Maya as she vies for a new, adult life, one utterly removed from what’s come before — a string of loser boyfriends, a complicated family history, and years of working menial jobs after leaving home as a teen.

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We meet Maya as her new neighbors do—watching her move into a home in a sleepy, affluent college town with her boyfriend of six months, Issac, who’s also her former professor. The neighbors are nosy. Who is this woman—and this guy? And what’s with the age difference? Maya is unsure of herself in her new role, like a baby giraffe learning to walk. She craves a stable home with a piano and a couch so heavy it takes three people to move it. She wants a dog, or maybe just the veneer of what a yard and dog imply. She’s more clear on what she doesn’t want—to get stuck, mired down by the grind of life, to turn into her mother, a quirky, complex woman whose recent death lingers in the forefront of Maya's thoughts.

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Bidar has created a marvel of a character in Maya. A deep thinker who reads people and her environment carefully. When Maya's chewing on something big, she bakes incessantly, can’t stop working puzzles. Now with Isaac, everybody’s sizing her up: Isaac’s colleagues, his teen daughter, the granola moms at the Y. But Maya’s watching them too. In fact, Bidar is very much interested in gaze in this complex, character-driven story that punches way above its 47 pages. Who notices who. Who matters in what spaces. Maya struggles to make friends with other women, but isn’t sure why. She’s hyper-conscious of the choices of other women and their consequences, especially around having children. Moving in with freshly divorced Isaac conveniently offers Maya everything she's never had—a quiet home, leisure, upward mobility— yet she's surprised to discover she's utterly bored. 

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Bidar is a master of using small, careful details to pin her characters. The way Maya is chastened when she refers to herself as Isaac's “significant other“ (“partner” being the term de jour in his academic circle). The way Isaac drips with faux feminism, his character revealed in small moments like when Maya gets a job, and he greets her with “Hail the working woman.” These pointed details add up to big tension. The well-heeled college town where Maya lives versus the working-class neighborhood where she finds a job as a legal secretary (“assistant,” as she frames the role for Isaac). The difference between the too-progressive, too-zen moms at the Y and the loud, in-fighting restaurant workers where Maya eats lunch. All the while, Maya is watching, watching, watching, trying to figure out her place in all of this. When she starts baking again in earnest, Bidar has us at the edge of our seats.

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Book Details

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Wild Plums can be purchased here.

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Published by ELJ Editions, this book comprises 47 pages of prose. The volume is  5.5 x 8.5" with a delightfully smooth cover. 

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