'Plot 29' by Allan Jenkins

I’m obsessed with memoirs, and I liked ‘Plot 29’ by Allan Jenkins – it made me want to get out into the garden, to entice colour, food and new life out of the soil…

The book starts as a gardening diary, interspersed with flashbacks. He starts in June, Saturday 6 am, then a paragraph starts with 1960. The story moves through the gardening year, but the intermittent sections jump backwards and forwards. Random, often unsettling memories, and questions he yearns to find answers for.

The writer, now in his early 60s, is overcome by memories, unsettled, feeling the need to uncover some of the memories he had forgotten. What happened in his childhood? Where did he grow up? Where was he fostered? What happened to his siblings? Who is his father? Why is his brother so angry? How did his brother get a hernia aged 3?

The memories and questions are deeply disturbing, and to process, to find solace, the author turns to his allotment. He does not drive, he catches the bus in the early morning, tends to his plants before work, sunshine, rain, cold – the garden is where he goes. This piece of land that he shares with others is where he grounds himself, where he finds stability that is threatened by those memories.

The author’s life, his wife, children, work – the reader is aware of something going on outside of the plot, the memories, yet – in the context of the book they seem irrelevant. His wife is barely mentioned, she has less space in the book than the couple he shares the allotment with. His gratitude to his wife emanates, as does the stability he gets from his job, yet neither play a role in the book. 

The book is about the plot, the plants, the people he shares it with, and his brother, his foster parents and the questions that haunt him.  A meditation more than a story with solution, a satisfying quiet read.