Plums for Months

Starred review from April 10, 2023
Cox paints a beautiful portrait of growing up in Portland, Ore., as a low-income child with Asperger’s in this one-of-a-kind debut. Growing up in a 110-year-old house where the only heat source was wood-burning stoves, Cox struggled to make sense of increasing sensory overload and a feeling of “worry that is always on overdrive.” She retreated into music and composition notebooks she filled with hundreds of lists; in conversations, she “only talks to new people if a smile isn’t enough and I have a prepared script in my head.” Eventually diagnosed with Asperger’s, she turned to home school, where choosing her own curriculum and being allowed to indulge her numerous fixations sparked her imagination and led her down the path to a career in creative writing. Cox’s dreamlike storytelling and unorthodox structure—some lyrical chapters are mere sentences long, other pages feature only a single, inscrutable photograph—effectively communicate the emotional experience of living in awe of small, quiet moments. This a tour de force, layered with complexities and wonder, that alchemizes Cox’s unique girlhood to something almost divine.