The Unbearable Lightness of Prunes

In this funny and surprising story set in today’s “New South,” a ten year-old boy’s efforts to avoid eating stewed prunes for breakfast sets in motion a series of calamitous events that wreaks havoc on his entire family, himself included. Both a window on the dynamics and web of interlocking relationships and mutual responsibilities that are common to all families, it is also a shrewd analysis of how “truth” is used and abused as a justification for all manner of nefarious activity that is fundamentally selfish and at odds with the self-sacrifice necessary to hold a family together. But this description is way too serious and unjust to the surreal and uproarious comedy at the heart of the story.
The characters of Jerrold, his Aunty Gin, his mother Sharleen and father Randolph (and even the Yorkie Suzie) are among the most colorful and memorable you will ever meet. Their personalities and the events of the story will entertain you long after you finish reading and perhaps will make you reconsider similar situations and circumstances in your own life in which a simple and seemingly unimportant act launched a host of hilarious unintended consequences.
Couched in the everyday speech of the contemporary south, and told primarily and ironically from Jerrold’s imperfect point of view, it quickly becomes clear that our young hero is a modern Tom Sawyer—and thereby hangs a tale (and his tail too).