THE GARDEN PLOT DIARIES by Endy Wright – Short Story Collections, Small Town Fiction, Humor

Endy Wright’s The Garden Plot Diaries is a delightful collection of four short stories about life, relationships, and consequences.

Wright captures the gossip and rivalries between factious groups of town folk, all between sixty and ninety-something, who have known each other since childhood and carry the grudges to prove it. Our delightful narrator professes, “I am a rambling old man with a tale to tell and in no hurry to tell it.” So, settle in.

Hailing himself from New Hampshire, Wright has set these stories in Monadnock, a New England town/region which he peoples with a menagerie of colorful octogenarians who drink, dance, and feud. In the voice of his narrator again, “[these are stories] of chaos creeping into God’s Garden.” Wright’s stories certainly do deliver a wonderful kind of chaos and pandemonium usually expected in a kindergarten class.

We meet Old Lady Sourton, known after her introduction as the OLS. We meet Ivendricus Poudry, or Iven as his friends call him, the sidekick to our narrator, and of course our humorous and witty prankster narrator whose name we never learn, even as we grow to love him.

These delightful characters, and so many more, leap off the page as they garden or go to the Oval in the town center to visit, shop, or pick up the morning paper. A tall tale lurks behind every pair of garden sheers and pot of tomato plants.

No place is safe, even while fishing on the ice. Iven and our narrator head out with Ned Jalbert and Chester Turcotte with some of Iven’s famous Lion’s Tooth wine. Our narrator brings along his fresh homemade cheese he calls Cutting Cheese. They travel to Lake Massabeesacomapesit and commence the tradition of setting up their picnic in the ice fishing house or “bob.” Soon, the wine and cheese are flowing, and the stories turn surprisingly real for our fishermen.

Wright spins his yarn and lures us into these hilarious fishing stories. Within the hour, the characters are reliving their WWII battle memories and becoming a force that even Eris Heavystep’s twelve-year-old twins can’t compete with– and when I say they can’t compete, these boys didn’t know what hit ‘em that day on the ice.

After our heroes wake from their post-fishing naps, they find that the OLS has won their special cheese at the town’s Christmas auction.

They waste no time in getting to the OLS’s house only to find they are too late. Her Zulu war outfit is missing from the mannequin in her museum-like home. Music is blaring and they can’t find the OLS. When they do, Wright describes a scene that will have readers rolling on the floor.

The grand finale is a ghost story to end all ghost stories, as only Farmer Horthfarger Ghunt can tell.

He sets a group of youngsters down in his pumpkin storage shed and spins a yarn for Halloween that would make Freddie Krueger run and hide. It’s a perfect way to end this wonderful and hysterical romp through Monadnock.

These four stories capture the quaint side of small-town living in New Hampshire. Wright draws a picture of a small town then colors outside the lines. Readers will fall in love with this motley crew of mischievous elders planting their gardens and sowing the seeds of prankery and high jinks. Five stars all the way!