Plumb (novel series)
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- Faber and Faber (London)
- Oxford University Press and Penguin Books (New Zealand)
- St Martin's Press (New York)
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| Author | Maurice Gee |
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| Language | New Zealand English |
| Genre | Family saga |
| Publisher |
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| Published | 1978–1983 |
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]
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]