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Вызов в Мемфис
Нью-йоркский редактор Филипп Карвер едет домой в провинциальный Мемфис. Вдовый отец хочет жениться повторно, и сестры Филиппа просят о помощи, чтобы помешать этому браку.
Возвращение в Мемфис заставляет героя погрузиться в воспоминания: переезд, который тяжко отразился на членах семьи, главенство отца и взаимное непонимание.
Семейная история разворачивается перед глазами Филиппа, обрастает драматическими подробностями и открывается с новой стороны.
Действие происходит на фоне американского Юга, нравы которого переданы со знанием, иронией и любовью.
Питер Тейлор � классик американской литературы. За свое творчество получил премию ПЕН/Фолкнер, медаль Американской академии и премию О. Генри.
Возвращение в Мемфис заставляет героя погрузиться в воспоминания: переезд, который тяжко отразился на членах семьи, главенство отца и взаимное непонимание.
Семейная история разворачивается перед глазами Филиппа, обрастает драматическими подробностями и открывается с новой стороны.
Действие происходит на фоне американского Юга, нравы которого переданы со знанием, иронией и любовью.
Питер Тейлор � классик американской литературы. За свое творчество получил премию ПЕН/Фолкнер, медаль Американской академии и премию О. Генри.
210 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 29, 1986
67 people are currently reading
10.3k people want to read
About the author
Peter Taylor
239books80followersPeter Matthew Hillsman Taylor was a U.S. author and writer. Considered to be one of the finest American short story writers, Taylor's fictional milieu is the urban South. His characters, usually middle or upper class people, often are living in a time of change and struggle to discover and define their roles in society.
Peter Taylor also wrote three novels, including A Summons to Memphis in 1986, for which he won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and In the Tennessee Country in 1994. His collection The Old Forest and Other Stories (1985) won the PEN/Faulkner Award. Taylor taught literature and writing at Kenyon and the University of Virginia.
Peter Taylor also wrote three novels, including A Summons to Memphis in 1986, for which he won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and In the Tennessee Country in 1994. His collection The Old Forest and Other Stories (1985) won the PEN/Faulkner Award. Taylor taught literature and writing at Kenyon and the University of Virginia.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 517 reviews
April 9, 2017
I read Pulitzer winning A Summon to Memphis by Peter Taylor as part of my classic bingo card. I found the concept of this novel, a middle aged son returning home to prevent his widower father from remarrying, to be thought provoking. Taylor details the differences of life between Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee, creating a premise in which a family's move from one city to the other causes a family to crumble.
Phillip Carver is thirteen years old when his father meets financial ruin and moves his family from Nashville to Memphis. Phillip and his older siblings Betsy, Josephine, and George consider themselves proud Nashville citizens and find the move traumatic. Betsy was practically engaged to be married, but upon moving, has the marriage called off at the hands of their father. She never falls in love again, and, along with Josephine, is resigned to living life as a spinster, a throwback to simpler times.
Forty years later, the often sickly Mrs Carver has finally succumbed to her myriad of real and imagined illnesses. Eighty one year old George Carver is considered the most sought after bachelor in Memphis, and falls into the clutches of a woman young enough to be his daughter. Appalled that this newcomer might inherit their heirlooms, Betsy and Josephine beg Phillip to return home. Such unravels a plot in which Phillip as the narrator alternates between present times and flashbacks, detailing how his father, in a never ending quest to constantly assert authority, demands to control every picayune detail of his children's life.
Peter Taylor is a new author for me. He was well regarded in southern writing circles, having won the Pen/Faulkner Award for his work prior to the Pulitzer. The idea that a rivalry between two cities and their distinct way of life could affect the history of a family is a novel premise. Taylor employs detailed imagery to highlight the differences between the two cities and creates well developed characters, each affected by the move in unique ways. Thus, I found the plot and prose to be intriguing and fast reading for a work of its quality.
I found A Summons to Memphis to be a throwback to yesteryear when life in the south held a quaint quality absent in the hustle and bustle of northern cities. This Pulitzer is as much to represent the southern literature genre as it is to Taylor's work. Additionally the idea that grown children can determine how their elderly parents live out the final years of their lives is an issue that remains timely even thirty years after the book's publication. A quality southern book where I felt as though I could be reading it on my porch in summer, I rate Pulitzer winner A Summons to Memphis 4.5 shining stars.
Phillip Carver is thirteen years old when his father meets financial ruin and moves his family from Nashville to Memphis. Phillip and his older siblings Betsy, Josephine, and George consider themselves proud Nashville citizens and find the move traumatic. Betsy was practically engaged to be married, but upon moving, has the marriage called off at the hands of their father. She never falls in love again, and, along with Josephine, is resigned to living life as a spinster, a throwback to simpler times.
Forty years later, the often sickly Mrs Carver has finally succumbed to her myriad of real and imagined illnesses. Eighty one year old George Carver is considered the most sought after bachelor in Memphis, and falls into the clutches of a woman young enough to be his daughter. Appalled that this newcomer might inherit their heirlooms, Betsy and Josephine beg Phillip to return home. Such unravels a plot in which Phillip as the narrator alternates between present times and flashbacks, detailing how his father, in a never ending quest to constantly assert authority, demands to control every picayune detail of his children's life.
Peter Taylor is a new author for me. He was well regarded in southern writing circles, having won the Pen/Faulkner Award for his work prior to the Pulitzer. The idea that a rivalry between two cities and their distinct way of life could affect the history of a family is a novel premise. Taylor employs detailed imagery to highlight the differences between the two cities and creates well developed characters, each affected by the move in unique ways. Thus, I found the plot and prose to be intriguing and fast reading for a work of its quality.
I found A Summons to Memphis to be a throwback to yesteryear when life in the south held a quaint quality absent in the hustle and bustle of northern cities. This Pulitzer is as much to represent the southern literature genre as it is to Taylor's work. Additionally the idea that grown children can determine how their elderly parents live out the final years of their lives is an issue that remains timely even thirty years after the book's publication. A quality southern book where I felt as though I could be reading it on my porch in summer, I rate Pulitzer winner A Summons to Memphis 4.5 shining stars.
August 20, 2019
A brief, leisurely novel written by a master of the short story, A Summons to Memphis is an excellent example of what Henry James referred to as "the beautiful and blessed nouvelle." The narrator Phillip, a New York City book editor, is the son of imposing Memphis lawyer George Carver. Phillip returns home when the family is disrupted by his octogenarian father's desire to remarry, and his older sisters' determination to thwart him. Phillip, meanwhile, is still obsessed with the belief that his father's decision to move the family from Nashville to Memphis forty years earlier blighted all of their lives.
I think the key to appreciating the subtlety of this novel is to realize that--even though the narrator considers himself to be superior to his "provincial" family--he is narrow, selfish and capable of only a limited range of emotions. Although he achieves some growth by the end of the book, he is still a cold, cautious person, trapped in the past and destined to remain so. Taylor artfully reveals his narrator's limitations as the novel progresses, particularly in the way the narrative voice obsessively circles around the few events in the story, refining, embellishing and distancing us--and himself--from the emotional truth of his tale.
November 6, 2023
I think this may easily be the dullest, and one of the most offensive novels toward women I've ever read, and I feel angry right now that I wasted precious hours of my reading time on it.
But, since I recently deleted a current review of mine because my own boisterous nature provoked equally boisterous comments from my friends after they read it (and it felt like it turned personal on the quite affable-looking, living author), I am now feeling like I'd like to try an experiment, of reviewing a book I didn't like, using John Updike's “Five Rules for Reviewing.�
Here's what I'm wondering. . . if I apply Updike's rules to a book that I just read but didn't enjoy at all. . . could I remain more impartial, yet still express my truth and frustrations?
Well, let's try it.
According to John Updike, Rule #1 is: Try to understand what the author wished to do, and not blame them for not achieving what they did not attempt.
Okay, well, that's a little confusing. I have NO IDEA what the author wished to do. I think he wanted to tell a story about the old social mores of the South and how the protagonist thought he needed to leave the actual region in order to face them/conquer them. If I'm correct about that, then I would say that yes, he achieved what he attempted. (But how can I know for sure what he wished to do, and why was his writing style so boring?)
Rule #2: Give them enough direct quotation—at least one extended passage—of the book's prose so the reader can form their own impression, can get their own taste.
Okay, so, this writer, Peter Taylor, wrote his 40-something protagonist, Phillip, as though he were a curmudgeonly old man, and Phillip must have called his vibrant sisters, Betsy and Josephine, “spinsters� a minimum of 17 times in the book:
In another, earlier time, of course, Betsy and Josephine would have been called spinsters. And no doubt they would have lived in the house with their old people and would have dressed and behaved considerably older than the married women their own age—that is, as a mark of the special respect due two virginal ladies. As a matter of fact, they did dress and behave differently from the married women who were their contemporaries. But not in the way it would have been in another era. The difference in their attire when had got to be fifty was toward the opposite end of the pole. From their mid-forties forward, as a matter of fact, they dressed more like young girls than like their married contemporaries, some of whom were already grandmothers, of course, with half-grown grandchildren
Friends with “half-grown grandchildren!� Would that they were pole dancers, you stodgy old bastard, and it gives me great satisfaction in knowing that you were dead wrong, when you assumed they were “virgin-spinsters.� They were having a LOT more fun than you were, Phillip!
Rule # 3: Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book.
Okay, that's a little vague. I think he means that if I'm declaring the book as “boring,� then I should include quotations that prove it. I submit the entire book.
Rule #4: Go easy on the plot summary, and do not give away the ending.
Okay, that's easy. I'm happy to see that there's one thing I do, naturally, in my reviews, without breaking any rules.
Rule #5: If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's ouevre or elsewhere. Try to understand its failure. Sure it's theirs and not yours?
Okay, I haven't read anything else by Peter Taylor, so I can't assess if my first experience of his work is indicative of how I'd feel about others, and I'd be willing to try another, but I can declare that William Styron was a Southern writer who wrote on similar themes, and I'd be far more likely to recommend his work, based on this one novel.
In regard to: Sure it's theirs and not yours?. . . It could be my own shortcoming, as a reader, that I am currently the exact age as one of Phillip's “old, almost elderly� sisters, and I found it incredibly offensive that I had to keep reading about how “old� and “embarrassing� they are, to him. They were two vivacious women who were trying to make the most out of their lives after their domineering patriarch of a father tried his damnedest to ruin them, and I'll bet. . .
They could have outrun, outwitted and outlasted their dusty, misogynistic kid brother.
But, since I recently deleted a current review of mine because my own boisterous nature provoked equally boisterous comments from my friends after they read it (and it felt like it turned personal on the quite affable-looking, living author), I am now feeling like I'd like to try an experiment, of reviewing a book I didn't like, using John Updike's “Five Rules for Reviewing.�
Here's what I'm wondering. . . if I apply Updike's rules to a book that I just read but didn't enjoy at all. . . could I remain more impartial, yet still express my truth and frustrations?
Well, let's try it.
According to John Updike, Rule #1 is: Try to understand what the author wished to do, and not blame them for not achieving what they did not attempt.
Okay, well, that's a little confusing. I have NO IDEA what the author wished to do. I think he wanted to tell a story about the old social mores of the South and how the protagonist thought he needed to leave the actual region in order to face them/conquer them. If I'm correct about that, then I would say that yes, he achieved what he attempted. (But how can I know for sure what he wished to do, and why was his writing style so boring?)
Rule #2: Give them enough direct quotation—at least one extended passage—of the book's prose so the reader can form their own impression, can get their own taste.
Okay, so, this writer, Peter Taylor, wrote his 40-something protagonist, Phillip, as though he were a curmudgeonly old man, and Phillip must have called his vibrant sisters, Betsy and Josephine, “spinsters� a minimum of 17 times in the book:
In another, earlier time, of course, Betsy and Josephine would have been called spinsters. And no doubt they would have lived in the house with their old people and would have dressed and behaved considerably older than the married women their own age—that is, as a mark of the special respect due two virginal ladies. As a matter of fact, they did dress and behave differently from the married women who were their contemporaries. But not in the way it would have been in another era. The difference in their attire when had got to be fifty was toward the opposite end of the pole. From their mid-forties forward, as a matter of fact, they dressed more like young girls than like their married contemporaries, some of whom were already grandmothers, of course, with half-grown grandchildren
Friends with “half-grown grandchildren!� Would that they were pole dancers, you stodgy old bastard, and it gives me great satisfaction in knowing that you were dead wrong, when you assumed they were “virgin-spinsters.� They were having a LOT more fun than you were, Phillip!
Rule # 3: Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book.
Okay, that's a little vague. I think he means that if I'm declaring the book as “boring,� then I should include quotations that prove it. I submit the entire book.
Rule #4: Go easy on the plot summary, and do not give away the ending.
Okay, that's easy. I'm happy to see that there's one thing I do, naturally, in my reviews, without breaking any rules.
Rule #5: If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's ouevre or elsewhere. Try to understand its failure. Sure it's theirs and not yours?
Okay, I haven't read anything else by Peter Taylor, so I can't assess if my first experience of his work is indicative of how I'd feel about others, and I'd be willing to try another, but I can declare that William Styron was a Southern writer who wrote on similar themes, and I'd be far more likely to recommend his work, based on this one novel.
In regard to: Sure it's theirs and not yours?. . . It could be my own shortcoming, as a reader, that I am currently the exact age as one of Phillip's “old, almost elderly� sisters, and I found it incredibly offensive that I had to keep reading about how “old� and “embarrassing� they are, to him. They were two vivacious women who were trying to make the most out of their lives after their domineering patriarch of a father tried his damnedest to ruin them, and I'll bet. . .
They could have outrun, outwitted and outlasted their dusty, misogynistic kid brother.
February 1, 2021
I hoped that would be better than I felt it was after I read it. I could never grow attached to the protagonist Phillip or his father or the two sisters. The first half of the book was, frankly, boring rich people’s problems. Towards the end it got a little more interesting but, not that interesting. I have not read either of the runner-ups for the 1987 Pulitzer ( by Donald Barthleme or
by Norman Rush, so I wonder if this was just sort of an off-year between 1986 and 1988 .
The book is about the longterm affects on the Carver family of their move from Nashville to Memphis due to a business failure and the perceived nefariousness of the business partner of the family patriarch, George. This happens when the protagonist Philip is a teenager and when his two older sisters are in the middle of their debutante debuts. The mother starts out as a socialite with a keen sense of humor: She said once, before a roomful of people, that any gin drink made her see double and feel single. (p. 35) However, following the move to Memphis, many unalterable changes happen to the family, despite George's uncanny ability to rebuild and double-down on his legacy as a lawyer and adapt to Memphis life: the two sisters become spinsters frozen forever in their roles as inured adolescents (p. 146) and have their own real estate business, Philip leaves definitively for New York, and Mother Minta slips into a crippling depression and dies. The core of the story is about Philip coming to grips with the causes and effects of this and with the attempt by the sisters to venge themselves on their father who is driven by his yearning for otherness: He aspired to an individuality that could not be accounted for by the components of his own character and his own identity. He aspired to otherness than what he was by accident of birth in any sense of the phrase. At some point in his maturing into manhood this yearning and this longing and this aspiring became a craving. (p. 162)
Another motif that Peter Taylor addresses in the book is the difference between the more old school aristocratic society that they left in Nashville and the more by-the-bootstraps, DIY community they adapt to in Memphis. Never having spent time in Tennessee, the subtleties were a bit lost on me, but it did give me the impression that the long and thing geography of Tennessee with its mountains and farming land would indeed create conditions for varied perceptions of life on one end or the other of the long state.
Philip discusses his issues with his father with his girlfriend Holly back in New York (who herself is struggling with family issues as well) and concludes that it seemed admirable that Father had had the courage and stamina to begin life over in early middle age. But as a father, it came too late - as a father, that is, of three children like Betsy, Josephine and myself. (p. 180) In fact, Holly and Philip debate whether it is better to forgive and forget or to cling to the memories. No conclusion is really drawn because it was as if we were two Jews in the Temple debating some obtuse question of morality or perhaps two Christian Puritans, two Baptists or Methodists in the backwoods of Tennessee. (p. 181)
It turns out for Philip, that the best way to communicate with his Father is via the phone in hashing through memories - once the bugaboo of Lewis Shackleford had been moved out of the way. Philip achieves a sort of inner peace and is able to deal more easily with Father's passing.
I was left feeling a bit empty after finishing this short, but unimpressive novel. The writing was OK - especially how the narrative was structured - but the characters and the situations just didn't talk to me. I don't know if I have the courage to attempt reading something else by this author or not.
My rating of all the Pulitzer Winners: /list/show/1...
by Norman Rush, so I wonder if this was just sort of an off-year between 1986 and 1988 .
The book is about the longterm affects on the Carver family of their move from Nashville to Memphis due to a business failure and the perceived nefariousness of the business partner of the family patriarch, George. This happens when the protagonist Philip is a teenager and when his two older sisters are in the middle of their debutante debuts. The mother starts out as a socialite with a keen sense of humor: She said once, before a roomful of people, that any gin drink made her see double and feel single. (p. 35) However, following the move to Memphis, many unalterable changes happen to the family, despite George's uncanny ability to rebuild and double-down on his legacy as a lawyer and adapt to Memphis life: the two sisters become spinsters frozen forever in their roles as inured adolescents (p. 146) and have their own real estate business, Philip leaves definitively for New York, and Mother Minta slips into a crippling depression and dies. The core of the story is about Philip coming to grips with the causes and effects of this and with the attempt by the sisters to venge themselves on their father who is driven by his yearning for otherness: He aspired to an individuality that could not be accounted for by the components of his own character and his own identity. He aspired to otherness than what he was by accident of birth in any sense of the phrase. At some point in his maturing into manhood this yearning and this longing and this aspiring became a craving. (p. 162)
Another motif that Peter Taylor addresses in the book is the difference between the more old school aristocratic society that they left in Nashville and the more by-the-bootstraps, DIY community they adapt to in Memphis. Never having spent time in Tennessee, the subtleties were a bit lost on me, but it did give me the impression that the long and thing geography of Tennessee with its mountains and farming land would indeed create conditions for varied perceptions of life on one end or the other of the long state.
Philip discusses his issues with his father with his girlfriend Holly back in New York (who herself is struggling with family issues as well) and concludes that it seemed admirable that Father had had the courage and stamina to begin life over in early middle age. But as a father, it came too late - as a father, that is, of three children like Betsy, Josephine and myself. (p. 180) In fact, Holly and Philip debate whether it is better to forgive and forget or to cling to the memories. No conclusion is really drawn because it was as if we were two Jews in the Temple debating some obtuse question of morality or perhaps two Christian Puritans, two Baptists or Methodists in the backwoods of Tennessee. (p. 181)
It turns out for Philip, that the best way to communicate with his Father is via the phone in hashing through memories - once the bugaboo of Lewis Shackleford had been moved out of the way. Philip achieves a sort of inner peace and is able to deal more easily with Father's passing.
I was left feeling a bit empty after finishing this short, but unimpressive novel. The writing was OK - especially how the narrative was structured - but the characters and the situations just didn't talk to me. I don't know if I have the courage to attempt reading something else by this author or not.
My rating of all the Pulitzer Winners: /list/show/1...
November 1, 2021
A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor won the National Book Critics Award in 1986 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1987. And well deserved it was. This was a complex but beautfully written book dealing with issues confronting families, namely adult children coming to terms with their childhood traumas and disappointments with their parents and ultimately, hopefully, coming to some sort of understanding and acceptance. The collective trauma of the Carver family, including that of the four childrens' mother, ensued when George Carver abruptly moved the family and his established law practice from their settled life in Nashville to Memphis and causing much consternation.
The book revolves around the attempt of middle-aged, unmarried children to foil the attempt of their charming and elderly widower father from remarrying. It is during these machinations over a period of time that brings to light issues that are inherent in the many-layered complexities of family relationships set in the south where there is an examination of the differences in the elegance and fashion between Nashville and Memphis.
At the heart of this tale, is the youngest son who has made a life for himself in New York City, not wanting to be drawn back into the family drama perceived as a crisis by his sisters with roots deep in their past. He begins to realize the power of the memories that he has repressed over the years as he comes to the realization that he must come to terms with the central trauma of his life at thirteen years of age. He begins to grapple with all of the emotions repressed over the years stemming from the family's abrupt move from Nashville to Memphis.
"Perhaps for Mother, who was past forty and had never lived outside the environs of Nashville, it had the worst effect of all, though certainly it did not seem so at the time. It was she who kept up the spirits of all of the rest of us. With her ironic cast of mind and her sense and knowledge of local history she kept comparing our removal to the various events of early Tennessee history. We were like the Donelson party on the voyage down the Tennessee River, making their way through the flocks of swans at Moccasin Bend. We were like the Watauga men setting out for the Great Powwow on the Long Island of the Holston. Or what she like best of all, we were like the Cherokees being driven from their ancestral lands on the notorious Trail of Tears."
The book revolves around the attempt of middle-aged, unmarried children to foil the attempt of their charming and elderly widower father from remarrying. It is during these machinations over a period of time that brings to light issues that are inherent in the many-layered complexities of family relationships set in the south where there is an examination of the differences in the elegance and fashion between Nashville and Memphis.
"I think it may be explained here that Father's elegance by this time was strictly a Memphis elegance and his fashion a Memphis fashion. . . . Nevertheless, in Memphis he was elegance and fashion itself for a man of his standing in his generation."
"As I came down the steps from the plane it seemed to me--or perhaps it only seems so in retrospect--that there was something in his attire to suggest every phase or period of his life and all of it integrated with or subjugated to what would seem--at least to a passing observer--his pure Memphis style."
At the heart of this tale, is the youngest son who has made a life for himself in New York City, not wanting to be drawn back into the family drama perceived as a crisis by his sisters with roots deep in their past. He begins to realize the power of the memories that he has repressed over the years as he comes to the realization that he must come to terms with the central trauma of his life at thirteen years of age. He begins to grapple with all of the emotions repressed over the years stemming from the family's abrupt move from Nashville to Memphis.
"Forgetting the injustices and seeming injustices which one suffered from one's parents during childhood and youth must be the major part of any maturing process."
March 10, 2016
Peter Taylor's Pulitzer Prize winning A Summons to Memphis is an extraordinary piece of literary fiction.
The narrator is Phillip Carver, a 49 year old man living in New York City working as an editor and rare books dealer in the mid 1960s. The drama begins when Phillip receives separate telephone calls from his sisters Betsy and Josephine complaining that their 81 year old father has the unthinkable and disgraceful notion to remarry. The crux of the story, however, is the family's history.
The Carver family is native of Nashville, except the patriarch George who was born in a rural West Tennessee town but attended the prestigious Vanderbilt University and became a respected Nashville lawyer. The family leads an ideal life until George Carver is compelled to uproot the family and move to Memphis in order to protect his reputation due to his association with a former friend, the unsavory Mr. Lewis Shakleford. The 1931 move is pivotal to the trajectory of the lives of each member of the family.
After the family relocates, it seems that the father is the only one to benefit, even though he always seems nostalgic and reflects on the superiority of Nashville. The teenage daughters are not allowed to be presented in Memphis and are denied the opportunity to find acceptable suitors. The sisters' maturity practically halts at this stage in their lives. Phillip is the tender age of 13 and handles the move poorly. The other brother Georgie eventually runs off to fight in the war. The mother declines physically and mentally.
Having lived most of my life in Middle Tennessee except for the decade I lived in Memphis, the most interesting part of the novel for me is the contrasting of the cities of Nashville and Memphis. Even though the two cities are separated by a mere 220 miles, for George it may as well have been a million miles. George views Nashville as a city of schools and churches, fox hunts and horse shows while Memphis is a place of steamboats and card playing, a less refined society. Taylor cites some interesting accounts in Tennessee history and geography. Another interesting dynamic is the role that our hometowns play in our lives. Phillip comes off as pretentious. He is condescending in his attitude toward Memphis lifestyles, culture, and fashion. While describing his friend Alex, he comments on his "provincial Memphis love for a simple truth." Ultimately, when Phillip returns to Memphis, he feels suffocated.
Taylor's work is a wonderful look at the complex nature of family. The reader is left contemplating the motives of the family members. Do they meddle in each other's lives out of love or selfishness or retribution? Do we ever really know the people with whom we have the closest relations? What is the role of society's expectations? Do we ever really mature or are we always trapped in the familial roles we occupy?
I am not sure that Taylor's style will appeal to everyone, but needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Memorable quotes:
But maybe it was only that Father was thinking that he must arrive in Memphis with the entire family household intact if he was to make a new go of things...He did enter so, and perhaps that is what sustained him in the years immediately afterward, sustained him and in some degree destroyed the rest of us.
My own view of Father was not nearly so high-flown or complicated. For me he was flesh and blood and until the day I left Memphis behind, to take up residence in Manhattan, he remained simply a barrier between me and any independent life I might aspire to- a barrier to any pursuit of ideas, interests, goals that my temperament guided me toward.
Forgetting the injustices and seeming injustices which one suffered from one's parents during childhood and youth must be the major part of any maturing process.
The narrator is Phillip Carver, a 49 year old man living in New York City working as an editor and rare books dealer in the mid 1960s. The drama begins when Phillip receives separate telephone calls from his sisters Betsy and Josephine complaining that their 81 year old father has the unthinkable and disgraceful notion to remarry. The crux of the story, however, is the family's history.
The Carver family is native of Nashville, except the patriarch George who was born in a rural West Tennessee town but attended the prestigious Vanderbilt University and became a respected Nashville lawyer. The family leads an ideal life until George Carver is compelled to uproot the family and move to Memphis in order to protect his reputation due to his association with a former friend, the unsavory Mr. Lewis Shakleford. The 1931 move is pivotal to the trajectory of the lives of each member of the family.
After the family relocates, it seems that the father is the only one to benefit, even though he always seems nostalgic and reflects on the superiority of Nashville. The teenage daughters are not allowed to be presented in Memphis and are denied the opportunity to find acceptable suitors. The sisters' maturity practically halts at this stage in their lives. Phillip is the tender age of 13 and handles the move poorly. The other brother Georgie eventually runs off to fight in the war. The mother declines physically and mentally.
Having lived most of my life in Middle Tennessee except for the decade I lived in Memphis, the most interesting part of the novel for me is the contrasting of the cities of Nashville and Memphis. Even though the two cities are separated by a mere 220 miles, for George it may as well have been a million miles. George views Nashville as a city of schools and churches, fox hunts and horse shows while Memphis is a place of steamboats and card playing, a less refined society. Taylor cites some interesting accounts in Tennessee history and geography. Another interesting dynamic is the role that our hometowns play in our lives. Phillip comes off as pretentious. He is condescending in his attitude toward Memphis lifestyles, culture, and fashion. While describing his friend Alex, he comments on his "provincial Memphis love for a simple truth." Ultimately, when Phillip returns to Memphis, he feels suffocated.
Taylor's work is a wonderful look at the complex nature of family. The reader is left contemplating the motives of the family members. Do they meddle in each other's lives out of love or selfishness or retribution? Do we ever really know the people with whom we have the closest relations? What is the role of society's expectations? Do we ever really mature or are we always trapped in the familial roles we occupy?
I am not sure that Taylor's style will appeal to everyone, but needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Memorable quotes:
But maybe it was only that Father was thinking that he must arrive in Memphis with the entire family household intact if he was to make a new go of things...He did enter so, and perhaps that is what sustained him in the years immediately afterward, sustained him and in some degree destroyed the rest of us.
My own view of Father was not nearly so high-flown or complicated. For me he was flesh and blood and until the day I left Memphis behind, to take up residence in Manhattan, he remained simply a barrier between me and any independent life I might aspire to- a barrier to any pursuit of ideas, interests, goals that my temperament guided me toward.
Forgetting the injustices and seeming injustices which one suffered from one's parents during childhood and youth must be the major part of any maturing process.
July 17, 2016
Memphis Beau
Do we ever get over the pain and betrayals � or what we remember as the pain and betrayals � from childhood? That’s one of the themes in this quiet, nuanced and beguiling novel by Peter Taylor, who’s best known for his short stories about genteel, upper class Southerners.
Middle-aged editor and book collector Phillip Carver has fled the languid, gossipy world of Tennessee and has lived in bustling Manhattan for decades. When he gets consecutive phone calls from his two older sisters � none of the three children has ever married � about their widowed father, who’s about to wed a much younger woman, he hops on a plane the next day.
And so begins this look back at the family’s history, and in fact the history of a certain segment of Tennessee society, an old-fashioned world of debutante balls, speakeasies, mint juleps and (yes, I’m afraid) kindly black servants. (African-Americans play a more prominent role in many of Taylor’s stories; here they are in the background, moving around furniture, chauffeuring, etc.)
The Carver children’s lives were irrevocably changed 30 years earlier when their attorney father, betrayed by an untrustworthy business partner, uprooted them and moved from Nashville to Memphis. One sister had to give up an engagement; Philip was forever torn from an adolescent love; and the children’s mother, dead a couple of years before the book begins, had to leave behind all that was familiar and start anew.
The story unfolds leisurely, Taylor’s prose the equivalent of a man dressed in a seersucker suit and bowtie gently rocking on his chair on a porch, pausing to sip from a cool drink before he moves on. This book is all about atmosphere. The clothes people wear. Little resentments that go unaddressed for a lifetime.
I think this short novel � which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1986 � is best read in a day or two. I put it down for a couple of weeks, and when I picked it up again had to reorient myself. Names and details had faded from memory, like morning mist evaporating when the sun comes out.
It’s a book that really needs to be read after one’s lived a certain number of years. Anyone with older parents will relate to its complexities. Consider a passage like this:
How wise, and true. Taylor’s prose, apart from a few repetitions (the word “Presently� is overused) can be miraculous. There’s a scene when the narrator arrives at an airport and his father is waiting for him, not indoors but out on the tarmac, that is so startling yet beautiful it took me aback. I’m not sure I’ll forget that image, and the bittersweet resolution to the scene, for a long time.
The book overall? I don’t think I’ll remember the plot’s meagre details, but the wistful, elegiac mood will stay with me. I need to go back to Taylor’s stories. His books are hard to find, but they’re worth seeking out in libraries or, appropriate in this case, second-hand bookstores.
Do we ever get over the pain and betrayals � or what we remember as the pain and betrayals � from childhood? That’s one of the themes in this quiet, nuanced and beguiling novel by Peter Taylor, who’s best known for his short stories about genteel, upper class Southerners.
Middle-aged editor and book collector Phillip Carver has fled the languid, gossipy world of Tennessee and has lived in bustling Manhattan for decades. When he gets consecutive phone calls from his two older sisters � none of the three children has ever married � about their widowed father, who’s about to wed a much younger woman, he hops on a plane the next day.
And so begins this look back at the family’s history, and in fact the history of a certain segment of Tennessee society, an old-fashioned world of debutante balls, speakeasies, mint juleps and (yes, I’m afraid) kindly black servants. (African-Americans play a more prominent role in many of Taylor’s stories; here they are in the background, moving around furniture, chauffeuring, etc.)
The Carver children’s lives were irrevocably changed 30 years earlier when their attorney father, betrayed by an untrustworthy business partner, uprooted them and moved from Nashville to Memphis. One sister had to give up an engagement; Philip was forever torn from an adolescent love; and the children’s mother, dead a couple of years before the book begins, had to leave behind all that was familiar and start anew.
The story unfolds leisurely, Taylor’s prose the equivalent of a man dressed in a seersucker suit and bowtie gently rocking on his chair on a porch, pausing to sip from a cool drink before he moves on. This book is all about atmosphere. The clothes people wear. Little resentments that go unaddressed for a lifetime.
I think this short novel � which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1986 � is best read in a day or two. I put it down for a couple of weeks, and when I picked it up again had to reorient myself. Names and details had faded from memory, like morning mist evaporating when the sun comes out.
It’s a book that really needs to be read after one’s lived a certain number of years. Anyone with older parents will relate to its complexities. Consider a passage like this:
Forgetting the injustices and seeming injustices which one suffered from one’s parents during childhood and youth must be the major part of any maturing process. I kept repeating this to myself, as though it were a lesson I would at some future time be accountable for. A certain oblivion was what we must undergo in order to become adults and live peacefully with ourselves.
How wise, and true. Taylor’s prose, apart from a few repetitions (the word “Presently� is overused) can be miraculous. There’s a scene when the narrator arrives at an airport and his father is waiting for him, not indoors but out on the tarmac, that is so startling yet beautiful it took me aback. I’m not sure I’ll forget that image, and the bittersweet resolution to the scene, for a long time.
The book overall? I don’t think I’ll remember the plot’s meagre details, but the wistful, elegiac mood will stay with me. I need to go back to Taylor’s stories. His books are hard to find, but they’re worth seeking out in libraries or, appropriate in this case, second-hand bookstores.
November 7, 2024
Peter Taylor was a southern writer and known, as so many southern writers are, for his proficiency in crafting short stories. A Summons To Memphis is one of his very few novels and more's the pity as he excelled in the longer form as well; evinced by its award of the Pulitzer Prize. This is storytelling in the vein of A Thousand Acres, August: Osage County, and The Prince of Tides - which is to say we're deep in the psychological terrain of damaged families.
Phillip Carver, the last living son of the Carver family, has long since fled the environs of a father he found entirely too magnetic, self-driven and dictatorial for his taste. Having assembled in Manhattan, and largely from scratch, a bookish life with a bookish near-wife, he has since achieved the serenity to re-examine his rage and the ease with which he'd allowed it to color the truths of his history. Blame is such a motivational thrust in the hard-scrabble years of our twenties and thirties, but what of our forties, when fault for many appears to fall apart and with it the cohesion of our identities?
A call is received, a summons to Memphis and the father, now widowed, now threatening re-marriage, who has, in this exceedingly southern way, thrown down the gauntlet to his children. Lives had been ruined, after all, and lasting loves prevented; revenge is in the air.
There is much literary magnificence in this, but what made the novel exceptional for me was its fierce insistence on holding not only parents to account but their children as well. Also, Taylor's implicit revelation of the profound effect an ill-timed upheaval can have on the trajectory of youth. And lastly, of course, this awful, awful moment when one realizes it isn't just the single figure. The whole family has gone off the rails. Irretrievable in its entirety.
A classic in my estimation, and a hell of a read.
Phillip Carver, the last living son of the Carver family, has long since fled the environs of a father he found entirely too magnetic, self-driven and dictatorial for his taste. Having assembled in Manhattan, and largely from scratch, a bookish life with a bookish near-wife, he has since achieved the serenity to re-examine his rage and the ease with which he'd allowed it to color the truths of his history. Blame is such a motivational thrust in the hard-scrabble years of our twenties and thirties, but what of our forties, when fault for many appears to fall apart and with it the cohesion of our identities?
A call is received, a summons to Memphis and the father, now widowed, now threatening re-marriage, who has, in this exceedingly southern way, thrown down the gauntlet to his children. Lives had been ruined, after all, and lasting loves prevented; revenge is in the air.
There is much literary magnificence in this, but what made the novel exceptional for me was its fierce insistence on holding not only parents to account but their children as well. Also, Taylor's implicit revelation of the profound effect an ill-timed upheaval can have on the trajectory of youth. And lastly, of course, this awful, awful moment when one realizes it isn't just the single figure. The whole family has gone off the rails. Irretrievable in its entirety.
A classic in my estimation, and a hell of a read.
July 30, 2018
Philip Carter is approaching the age of fifty. Within an hour he gets calls from his two older sisters. He is told he must get himself to Memphis the very next day. Their eighty-one-year-old widowed father intends on marrying! They need his help to stop this. So unfolds the story.
Philip is an antique book collector residing in New York City with his girlfriend Holly. From the plethora of details given, I calculate this happens in 1967. Philip is himself telling us of what happened, recounting also past events—the family’s move from Nashville to Memphis in 1931 when he was thirteen, his first and later attractions to different girls and his assignments during the Second World War. The story revolves around family relationships. When their father is betrayed by a close business associate and friend, everything, absolutely everything in the family is altered.
I repeat, the book is about family relationships. It is about the strength and importance of these relationships. It is also about what is involved in the process of becoming mature, the process of freeing one’s self from a parent’s all-encompassing, controlling grip. How should we, how do we ultimately attain independence? This being a situation we must all sooner or later deal with, the central theme of the book is something most of us will relate too.
Nevertheless, the book gave me problems. I will explain why.
First of all, we are being t-o-l-d by Philip what happened in his family. The reader does not live the events firsthand.
Secondly, the story begins by emphasizing the differences between Memphis and Nashville society. I was intrigued; my interest was piqued. I knew nothing about such regional distinctions between these two Southern communities. The theme putters out, loses steam, no real conclusion can be drawn.
Thirdly, I simply could not relate to the choices made by the book’s characters. I could understand their emotions, but what they do gives me trouble. Lousy things do happen. You gripe, you complain, you let off some steam, but then you pick yourself up and go on. The author fails to create a believable scenario of events. Philip’s older brother makes a choice, but it is only briefly skimmed over, not covered with depth. The behavior of Philip’s two sisters is beyond my comprehension. I do not find it believable that . The degree to which subsidiary characters fold and do just as they are told, that Philip’s father was able to , I find totally unbelievable.
Flipping back and forth in time, making sense of all the facts thrown at you, makes the whole telling of the story too complicated. I found myself jotting down notes right and left, unsure of what was important and what wasn’t!
The audiobook is narrated by Boyd Gaines. To decipher what is said one must turn up the volume very loud. Only with the volume set very high, could I distinguish the words properly. I do not know who is at fault, but it was not pleasant. I have given the narration performance three stars because I have a hunch this is not the narrator’s fault.
The novel’s themes are interesting, but the final product is not well done. Aspects are exaggerated beyond credibility.
Philip is an antique book collector residing in New York City with his girlfriend Holly. From the plethora of details given, I calculate this happens in 1967. Philip is himself telling us of what happened, recounting also past events—the family’s move from Nashville to Memphis in 1931 when he was thirteen, his first and later attractions to different girls and his assignments during the Second World War. The story revolves around family relationships. When their father is betrayed by a close business associate and friend, everything, absolutely everything in the family is altered.
I repeat, the book is about family relationships. It is about the strength and importance of these relationships. It is also about what is involved in the process of becoming mature, the process of freeing one’s self from a parent’s all-encompassing, controlling grip. How should we, how do we ultimately attain independence? This being a situation we must all sooner or later deal with, the central theme of the book is something most of us will relate too.
Nevertheless, the book gave me problems. I will explain why.
First of all, we are being t-o-l-d by Philip what happened in his family. The reader does not live the events firsthand.
Secondly, the story begins by emphasizing the differences between Memphis and Nashville society. I was intrigued; my interest was piqued. I knew nothing about such regional distinctions between these two Southern communities. The theme putters out, loses steam, no real conclusion can be drawn.
Thirdly, I simply could not relate to the choices made by the book’s characters. I could understand their emotions, but what they do gives me trouble. Lousy things do happen. You gripe, you complain, you let off some steam, but then you pick yourself up and go on. The author fails to create a believable scenario of events. Philip’s older brother makes a choice, but it is only briefly skimmed over, not covered with depth. The behavior of Philip’s two sisters is beyond my comprehension. I do not find it believable that . The degree to which subsidiary characters fold and do just as they are told, that Philip’s father was able to , I find totally unbelievable.
Flipping back and forth in time, making sense of all the facts thrown at you, makes the whole telling of the story too complicated. I found myself jotting down notes right and left, unsure of what was important and what wasn’t!
The audiobook is narrated by Boyd Gaines. To decipher what is said one must turn up the volume very loud. Only with the volume set very high, could I distinguish the words properly. I do not know who is at fault, but it was not pleasant. I have given the narration performance three stars because I have a hunch this is not the narrator’s fault.
The novel’s themes are interesting, but the final product is not well done. Aspects are exaggerated beyond credibility.
September 2, 2015
This is really a very strong 4.5 rating.
I read this book many years ago, but remember nothing of the story at all. I only remember that I loved it, but obviously not why. It may be that it was a completely different book to the much younger Diane. In any case, here's what I think of it now.
The title is brilliant, because of the many different connotations of the word summons. Phillip is summoned to Memphis from NY by his sisters when their 81 year old widowed father wants to re-marry. The family had been summoned to Memphis by that same father when he moved the family there from Nashville thirty years prior to the setting of the book. The move was to get far distant from a close friend and business partner after a betrayal. Of course, the entire family considered the move a betrayal by their father, as the children were in their teens, and their mother was part of an old Nashville family and had never lived anywhere else. To say this was a great upheaval is understating the fact, because apparently this move caused a happy, well-to-do, well-adjusted family to become completely dysfunctional.
The story is narrated by Phillip, the youngest child of 4 siblings. He was 13 at the time of the move in 1931. Georgie was his 14 year old brother, and Josephine and Betsy are 19 and 20. Only the two sisters and Phillip still remain, Georgie having joined the army and "gotten himself killed to escape the family situation." Both sisters and Phillip had been in love and wanted to marry, but the domineering father, through acts of betrayal and outright refusals to allow the relationships, had put an end to it. To say that revenge was extracted by the three of them is putting it mildly, but the telling of the tale, including the family history and Phillip's life in NY, is a work of art.
There's not a wasted word or phrase, the settings are meticulously described, and the story the reader gets between the lines is even more astounding than the words on the page.
I think Peter Taylor was also using this family to draw a metaphor between the Old South and the New South, and that may be why this book won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize. In any case, it was a wonderful 2nd/1st read for me.
I read this book many years ago, but remember nothing of the story at all. I only remember that I loved it, but obviously not why. It may be that it was a completely different book to the much younger Diane. In any case, here's what I think of it now.
The title is brilliant, because of the many different connotations of the word summons. Phillip is summoned to Memphis from NY by his sisters when their 81 year old widowed father wants to re-marry. The family had been summoned to Memphis by that same father when he moved the family there from Nashville thirty years prior to the setting of the book. The move was to get far distant from a close friend and business partner after a betrayal. Of course, the entire family considered the move a betrayal by their father, as the children were in their teens, and their mother was part of an old Nashville family and had never lived anywhere else. To say this was a great upheaval is understating the fact, because apparently this move caused a happy, well-to-do, well-adjusted family to become completely dysfunctional.
The story is narrated by Phillip, the youngest child of 4 siblings. He was 13 at the time of the move in 1931. Georgie was his 14 year old brother, and Josephine and Betsy are 19 and 20. Only the two sisters and Phillip still remain, Georgie having joined the army and "gotten himself killed to escape the family situation." Both sisters and Phillip had been in love and wanted to marry, but the domineering father, through acts of betrayal and outright refusals to allow the relationships, had put an end to it. To say that revenge was extracted by the three of them is putting it mildly, but the telling of the tale, including the family history and Phillip's life in NY, is a work of art.
There's not a wasted word or phrase, the settings are meticulously described, and the story the reader gets between the lines is even more astounding than the words on the page.
I think Peter Taylor was also using this family to draw a metaphor between the Old South and the New South, and that may be why this book won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize. In any case, it was a wonderful 2nd/1st read for me.
November 30, 2011
Better known for his short stories, Peter Taylor pulled out all the stops with "A Summons to Memphis," winning the National Book Critics Award in 1986 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1987. Taylor, born in 1917, to a wealthy Nashville family, obviously wrote what he knew.
George Carver is a well known Nashville Lawyer. However, his origins are of a more humble nature. Carver's roots were in Thorne County, outside Memphis, a member of the planter class, whose wealth was based on slavery, cotton, and agriculture.
As the story unfolds, it is the era of the Great Depression. Carver is the husband of a Virginia debutante, who fits well into Nashville Society. His two daughters have both come out in successive debutante balls. Beverly, the eldest child, landed a doctor and they are engaged. Jo, the younger daughter hasn't landed the appropriate mate, but prospects are good. George and Phillip, the two sons originally appear as part of the background.
The concept of Southern Honor lies at the core of George Carver's system of belief. When a younger colleague swindles Carver and the company's stockholders out of a fortune, rather than confront his business partner, Carver chooses to close his Nashville practice and move his family to Memphis.
In this day, a move from Nashville to Memphis doesn't seem to have much significance. However, during the 1930s in Tennessee, Nashville was the social and cultural center of the state. Memphis was a river and cotton town. It's society was considered a definite step down in class and culture. Knoxville and Chattanooga were not mentioned in the same breath as Nashville.
Fast forward thirty years, which is the true beginning of Taylor's story. Phillip served his time during World War II. He established his home in New York, a bibliophile, dealing in rare and antique books. Georgie, the Patriarch's namesake managed to get himself killed at the beginning of the D-Day campaign, effectively removing himself from a family in which he cared for no part.
In the interim, the Carter Sisters have made a name for themselves in Memphis Society. Neither has married, their father having sabotaged their chances at marriage on his perception of those ties being related to the man who betrayed him. Beverly and Jo are those wild girls from Nashville who invent scandalous reputations for themselves, clearly as revenge upon their father who valued his reputation so highly.
The summons to Memphis is made by the Carver sisters to remaining brother Phillip to prevent the impending marriage of their 81 year old father to a younger woman named Clara Starkville. After all, a sizable family fortune has been accumulated during those Knoxville years, no matter what was lost as a result of the scandal in Nashville. Does Phillip want to see their father make a fool of himself?
Phillip would rather avoid his summons to Memphis. However, his relationship with his live-in is on the skids. They're in the midst of a trial separation. So Phillip dutifully goes.
George Carver has not been an easy father to love. He has made decisions which he felt were in the best interests of his wife and children, even at the cost their happiness. There is serious question as to whether his decisions were based on his children's best interests or the preservation of his own reputation.
"A Summons to Memphis" is a story of family, forgiveness, recognition, and reconciliation. It is also a powerful tale of how children reverse the role of control from parent to self. The question for each family ultimately is whether natural human emotions will hold sway over forgiveness and the possibility of redemption.
Often referred to as "Jamesian" in his writing, I would have to disagree. Taylor's prose flows easily and with a rare simple beauty. This novel is Eudora Welty's "The Optimist's Daughter" with an edge. Taylor's writing is much more reminiscent of the novels and stories of Eudora Welty, and Walker Percy.
George Carver is a well known Nashville Lawyer. However, his origins are of a more humble nature. Carver's roots were in Thorne County, outside Memphis, a member of the planter class, whose wealth was based on slavery, cotton, and agriculture.
As the story unfolds, it is the era of the Great Depression. Carver is the husband of a Virginia debutante, who fits well into Nashville Society. His two daughters have both come out in successive debutante balls. Beverly, the eldest child, landed a doctor and they are engaged. Jo, the younger daughter hasn't landed the appropriate mate, but prospects are good. George and Phillip, the two sons originally appear as part of the background.
The concept of Southern Honor lies at the core of George Carver's system of belief. When a younger colleague swindles Carver and the company's stockholders out of a fortune, rather than confront his business partner, Carver chooses to close his Nashville practice and move his family to Memphis.
In this day, a move from Nashville to Memphis doesn't seem to have much significance. However, during the 1930s in Tennessee, Nashville was the social and cultural center of the state. Memphis was a river and cotton town. It's society was considered a definite step down in class and culture. Knoxville and Chattanooga were not mentioned in the same breath as Nashville.
Fast forward thirty years, which is the true beginning of Taylor's story. Phillip served his time during World War II. He established his home in New York, a bibliophile, dealing in rare and antique books. Georgie, the Patriarch's namesake managed to get himself killed at the beginning of the D-Day campaign, effectively removing himself from a family in which he cared for no part.
In the interim, the Carter Sisters have made a name for themselves in Memphis Society. Neither has married, their father having sabotaged their chances at marriage on his perception of those ties being related to the man who betrayed him. Beverly and Jo are those wild girls from Nashville who invent scandalous reputations for themselves, clearly as revenge upon their father who valued his reputation so highly.
The summons to Memphis is made by the Carver sisters to remaining brother Phillip to prevent the impending marriage of their 81 year old father to a younger woman named Clara Starkville. After all, a sizable family fortune has been accumulated during those Knoxville years, no matter what was lost as a result of the scandal in Nashville. Does Phillip want to see their father make a fool of himself?
Phillip would rather avoid his summons to Memphis. However, his relationship with his live-in is on the skids. They're in the midst of a trial separation. So Phillip dutifully goes.
George Carver has not been an easy father to love. He has made decisions which he felt were in the best interests of his wife and children, even at the cost their happiness. There is serious question as to whether his decisions were based on his children's best interests or the preservation of his own reputation.
"A Summons to Memphis" is a story of family, forgiveness, recognition, and reconciliation. It is also a powerful tale of how children reverse the role of control from parent to self. The question for each family ultimately is whether natural human emotions will hold sway over forgiveness and the possibility of redemption.
Often referred to as "Jamesian" in his writing, I would have to disagree. Taylor's prose flows easily and with a rare simple beauty. This novel is Eudora Welty's "The Optimist's Daughter" with an edge. Taylor's writing is much more reminiscent of the novels and stories of Eudora Welty, and Walker Percy.
November 2, 2021
Well…I read this is 1996 and I decided this morning to read it again. It’s been on my bookshelf ever since I first read it, and I couldn’t remember what it was about, and I knew Peter Taylor was a well-respected writer of southern fiction, so that’s that. And last time I read it I gave it an A�. I just found that out after I have read it a second time. And this time around reading it, it was just OK � 2.5 stars. I run counter to not only myself of 25 years ago but also to many periodicals and organization that gave this book the following:
� Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1987),
� Los Angeles Times Book Prize Nominee for Fiction (1987),
� National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee for Fiction (1986),
� National Book Award Finalist for Fiction (1987)
One-sentence synopsis: an 81-year old man wants to marry a woman (it would be his second wife…the first wife died a while back) and his two daughters who are in their 50s and are old maids, do not want the marriage to take place, and they call their brother who is in New York to skedaddle back to Memphis to break up the event.
There were certain things I did not understand about the story and that diminished my enthusiasm somewhat for the novel.
� Why was the father hell-bent on nixing his daughters� budding relationships with other young men when they were approaching the age to be married? There was one beau, Wyant Brawley, who was practically engaged to be married with Betsy and Wyant sure as hell didn’t understand why the father had a bug up his ass about him. He directly asked him what was the problem, and the father evaded the issue. That may be all well and good, but the narrator could have shed some light on the issue to the readers.
� The narrator, Phillip Carver, was in love with a young woman, Clara Price, when he was in his early 20s and in the Army, and he was on his way to getting married with her. Apparently, the father once again had a bug up his ass, and went to the girl’s parents and God-knows-what-he-told-them, but the end result was her going to Brazil without telling the Phillip. End of that! Why? Again, and frustratingly to me, Peter Taylor (i.e., the narrator, Phillip Carver) never reveals it.
� Why near the end of the novel did Clara Price appear at a restaurant where Phillip was with the two sisters and their father? Brief mention was made that the sisters had concocted that scheme, but I was clueless as to why that would be. Why was Clara back in the picture after all those years? It must have meant something to somebody, but it sure as hell wasn’t me. Once again, I missed the clue train. 🙁
Apparently, nobody else was clueless, as the book garnered so many awards and near-final awards. Oh well. I still have two more books of his to get through � The Old Forest and Other Stories (1985, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award) and A Woman of Means (1950).
Oh yeah, and another thing, I didn’t like anybody in the novel. 😐 😑 😬
Oh and one more thing, had this been 300 or 400 pages I would have dropped this down to two stars for sure. This could have been an OK short story but he dragged it out to a full-length novel. Now it sounds like I have a bug up my ass. 🙁
Reviews:
� OMG, this person agreed with me 100%! 😮 😲
�
�
� Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1987),
� Los Angeles Times Book Prize Nominee for Fiction (1987),
� National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee for Fiction (1986),
� National Book Award Finalist for Fiction (1987)
One-sentence synopsis: an 81-year old man wants to marry a woman (it would be his second wife…the first wife died a while back) and his two daughters who are in their 50s and are old maids, do not want the marriage to take place, and they call their brother who is in New York to skedaddle back to Memphis to break up the event.
There were certain things I did not understand about the story and that diminished my enthusiasm somewhat for the novel.
� Why was the father hell-bent on nixing his daughters� budding relationships with other young men when they were approaching the age to be married? There was one beau, Wyant Brawley, who was practically engaged to be married with Betsy and Wyant sure as hell didn’t understand why the father had a bug up his ass about him. He directly asked him what was the problem, and the father evaded the issue. That may be all well and good, but the narrator could have shed some light on the issue to the readers.
� The narrator, Phillip Carver, was in love with a young woman, Clara Price, when he was in his early 20s and in the Army, and he was on his way to getting married with her. Apparently, the father once again had a bug up his ass, and went to the girl’s parents and God-knows-what-he-told-them, but the end result was her going to Brazil without telling the Phillip. End of that! Why? Again, and frustratingly to me, Peter Taylor (i.e., the narrator, Phillip Carver) never reveals it.
� Why near the end of the novel did Clara Price appear at a restaurant where Phillip was with the two sisters and their father? Brief mention was made that the sisters had concocted that scheme, but I was clueless as to why that would be. Why was Clara back in the picture after all those years? It must have meant something to somebody, but it sure as hell wasn’t me. Once again, I missed the clue train. 🙁
Apparently, nobody else was clueless, as the book garnered so many awards and near-final awards. Oh well. I still have two more books of his to get through � The Old Forest and Other Stories (1985, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award) and A Woman of Means (1950).
Oh yeah, and another thing, I didn’t like anybody in the novel. 😐 😑 😬
Oh and one more thing, had this been 300 or 400 pages I would have dropped this down to two stars for sure. This could have been an OK short story but he dragged it out to a full-length novel. Now it sounds like I have a bug up my ass. 🙁
Reviews:
� OMG, this person agreed with me 100%! 😮 😲
�
�
June 12, 2022
Phillip is summoned back to the family home during a family crisis. His spinster sisters don't know what to do with their father who has announced his impending marriage to a younger woman and they want their brother to weigh in on the matter, on their side of course. Sisters, Betsy and Josephine are strong-minded women and are determined to prevent this wedding from happening. Phillip is a thoughtful and insightful man, and observes positive changes in his father, however he never quite develops enough backbone to stand up to his sisters despite seeing for himself what the state of play is.
We learn about both parents through Phillips eyes. He talks of the changes of mood and character he saw in his mother possibly due to the trauma of the family's move from Nashville to Memphis, "or it maybe that at sometime perhaps several years past that she had reached the limits of her sympathetic nature, maybe that she was by nature a good mother to children as long as they were children but not after they became adolescents and grown up children." I thought this was particularly insightful.
His father had previously always acted coldly toward him and his sisters, and been rather remote. However, when Phillip arrives, having responded to his sisters' summons, his father greets him with a warmth and enthusiasm that he finds astonishing. "He had never before in my life given me such a greeting. He seemed not like the old man described in Betsy's and Josephine's or in Alex's letters but a much younger and more vigorous man than I had seen the last time I was home." His father starts to talk excitedly about his wedding, which was to take place that very day.
"One could only assume that on this day at least or at this hour of this day all his ailments indeed all evidence of advance aged were in total remission. His gait was livelier than that of either of the younger men and he was certainly better dressed and better groomed. Even his broad brimmed felt hat had a rakish quality about it, turned up in the back and perched at a slight angle over his left eye."
However, his sisters move in to prevent the wedding and Phillip surmises that they are motivated by unforgiven past hurts that have frozen them in their teenage years:
"A certain oblivion was what we must undergo in order to become adults and live peacefully with ourselves. Suddenly my sisters seemed no longer a mystery to me. I understood much of their past conduct as never before. They were still, while actually in their mid-fifties, two teenaged girls dressed up and playing roles. It was their way of not facing or accepting the facts of their adult life. They could not forget the old injuries. They wished to keep them alive. They were frozen forever in their roles as injured adolescents."
Later on in the story, Phillip and his partner, Holly are both faced with the challenge of caring for elderly fathers who are curmudgeons:
"We went on talking about what was to be done for those two poor old souls, our fathers. If one couldn't bear to be with them if only because of temperament then how was one to offer protection and care. We were like a couple that finds itself bringing up children when there is no natural liking for children in either parent."
Finally, Phillip's father moves from the family home into an apartment and insists on taking a lot of his furniture with him that causes the apartment to seem even smaller. When the family had visited him in "his house and he had then grown tired of them he could and would go and hide himself upstairs but in the little retirement apartment there was no place to hide."
I truly enjoyed this book which provided a lot of food for thought, particularly in the area of navigating relationships with your parents as you, and they, age. Listening to Boyd Gaines narration was truly sublime. This is a slow moving family saga and the pacing was perfect for my current mood.
We learn about both parents through Phillips eyes. He talks of the changes of mood and character he saw in his mother possibly due to the trauma of the family's move from Nashville to Memphis, "or it maybe that at sometime perhaps several years past that she had reached the limits of her sympathetic nature, maybe that she was by nature a good mother to children as long as they were children but not after they became adolescents and grown up children." I thought this was particularly insightful.
His father had previously always acted coldly toward him and his sisters, and been rather remote. However, when Phillip arrives, having responded to his sisters' summons, his father greets him with a warmth and enthusiasm that he finds astonishing. "He had never before in my life given me such a greeting. He seemed not like the old man described in Betsy's and Josephine's or in Alex's letters but a much younger and more vigorous man than I had seen the last time I was home." His father starts to talk excitedly about his wedding, which was to take place that very day.
"One could only assume that on this day at least or at this hour of this day all his ailments indeed all evidence of advance aged were in total remission. His gait was livelier than that of either of the younger men and he was certainly better dressed and better groomed. Even his broad brimmed felt hat had a rakish quality about it, turned up in the back and perched at a slight angle over his left eye."
However, his sisters move in to prevent the wedding and Phillip surmises that they are motivated by unforgiven past hurts that have frozen them in their teenage years:
"A certain oblivion was what we must undergo in order to become adults and live peacefully with ourselves. Suddenly my sisters seemed no longer a mystery to me. I understood much of their past conduct as never before. They were still, while actually in their mid-fifties, two teenaged girls dressed up and playing roles. It was their way of not facing or accepting the facts of their adult life. They could not forget the old injuries. They wished to keep them alive. They were frozen forever in their roles as injured adolescents."
Later on in the story, Phillip and his partner, Holly are both faced with the challenge of caring for elderly fathers who are curmudgeons:
"We went on talking about what was to be done for those two poor old souls, our fathers. If one couldn't bear to be with them if only because of temperament then how was one to offer protection and care. We were like a couple that finds itself bringing up children when there is no natural liking for children in either parent."
Finally, Phillip's father moves from the family home into an apartment and insists on taking a lot of his furniture with him that causes the apartment to seem even smaller. When the family had visited him in "his house and he had then grown tired of them he could and would go and hide himself upstairs but in the little retirement apartment there was no place to hide."
I truly enjoyed this book which provided a lot of food for thought, particularly in the area of navigating relationships with your parents as you, and they, age. Listening to Boyd Gaines narration was truly sublime. This is a slow moving family saga and the pacing was perfect for my current mood.
February 11, 2008
1986 must have been a singularly awful year for literature, because the book that won the Pulitzer that year would have struggled during the years when Taylor (most of whose work was released during the forties) was in his salad days.
This is not to say A Summons to Memphis, Taylor's first novel in forty years, is a bad book. It's a decent book, a nice book. And that's exactly why it doesn't deserve one of the highest honors that can be conferred on a novel. It's nice. What's so great about nice?
When one thinks of Southern writers and Southern writing, names come to mind-- Faulkner, McCullers, Dickey (from Taylor's generation), Lee Smith, Barry Hannah (from the generation after). And, whther it's valid and warranted or not, Southern writing has become a genre in itself, where the gentility of Southern life is a veneer for the corruption beneath. A few novels have broken out of this mold successfully, but not many, and they've usually done it by having the corruption somehwere else. A Summons to Memphis, on the other hand, just kind of sits there being nice.
Phillip Carver (one breathes a sigh of relief that no one in the family is named Raymond) is the sixtyish son of a man who plans to remarry. Remarrying, in old Southern families, is frowned upon, especially when one is in one's eighties. We careen from present (where the rest of the family attempts to stop dad from remarrying and Phillip is attempting to hold his own relationship together) to past (where Phillip gradually reveals things about the family's past life) and back again, learning the story of the family's disgrace in Nashville and their subsequent move to Memphis. During those times, the book takes on a kind of comedy-of-manners quality, and would probably have worked had it remained so; it might also have worked in the various places where one member of the family spoils the romantic efforts of another member of the family (this happens a number of times throughout the book) as a kind of Shakespearean tragedy; attempting to combine the two makes them cancel one another out, and the reader is left with a kind of detached amusement.
It's well-written, and Taylor's writing style is as good as it was when he was the South's most celebrated short story writer. Problem is, it's a good style for short stories, and it doesn't hold up over two hundred twenty-five pages. Smack the Pulitzer committee in the head and go on to the next book.
This is not to say A Summons to Memphis, Taylor's first novel in forty years, is a bad book. It's a decent book, a nice book. And that's exactly why it doesn't deserve one of the highest honors that can be conferred on a novel. It's nice. What's so great about nice?
When one thinks of Southern writers and Southern writing, names come to mind-- Faulkner, McCullers, Dickey (from Taylor's generation), Lee Smith, Barry Hannah (from the generation after). And, whther it's valid and warranted or not, Southern writing has become a genre in itself, where the gentility of Southern life is a veneer for the corruption beneath. A few novels have broken out of this mold successfully, but not many, and they've usually done it by having the corruption somehwere else. A Summons to Memphis, on the other hand, just kind of sits there being nice.
Phillip Carver (one breathes a sigh of relief that no one in the family is named Raymond) is the sixtyish son of a man who plans to remarry. Remarrying, in old Southern families, is frowned upon, especially when one is in one's eighties. We careen from present (where the rest of the family attempts to stop dad from remarrying and Phillip is attempting to hold his own relationship together) to past (where Phillip gradually reveals things about the family's past life) and back again, learning the story of the family's disgrace in Nashville and their subsequent move to Memphis. During those times, the book takes on a kind of comedy-of-manners quality, and would probably have worked had it remained so; it might also have worked in the various places where one member of the family spoils the romantic efforts of another member of the family (this happens a number of times throughout the book) as a kind of Shakespearean tragedy; attempting to combine the two makes them cancel one another out, and the reader is left with a kind of detached amusement.
It's well-written, and Taylor's writing style is as good as it was when he was the South's most celebrated short story writer. Problem is, it's a good style for short stories, and it doesn't hold up over two hundred twenty-five pages. Smack the Pulitzer committee in the head and go on to the next book.
August 4, 2017
Siamo negli anni '70. Il protagonista è un agiato signore di mezz'età in crisi con la propria compagna, quando viene coinvolto dalle due sorelle che vivono lontano, appunto a Memphis, per una questione molto particolare.
Queste due bizzarre donne ultracinquantenni, nubili, dalla doppia o tripla vita, aggiornano il fratello sull'ottuogenario padre rimasto recentemente vedovo : "qualsiasi idea sbagliata avesse di sé e del mondo, il vecchio gentiluomo sapeva senza dubbio quali vestiti gli stavano bene". Questo dunque è il soggetto.
Le due attempate signorine raccontano, con certa ironia, come il padre fosse dapprima spesso invitato a cena da compassate signore sue coetanee. Poi come avesse cominciato a frequentare donne più giovani in locali dai nomi pittoreschi. Infine l'anziano comunica di voler unirsi in matrimonio con un'adeguata signora.
Dicono pertanto al fratello che un suo urgente ritorno a Memphis si rende quanto mai necessario.
A differenza di altri scrittori americani contemporanei, spesso alle prese con storie scioccanti o vicende estreme, Taylor qui rappresenta la 'normalità' di una famiglia, benché piuttosto complicata, nei suoi avvicendamenti.
Il linguaggio non vuole stupire o provocare, bensì fluisce con piacevole naturalezza, velato qua e là di sottile umorismo.
Il libro non contiene pagine 'da antologia', né frasi memorabili. Si presenta però come un romanzo di buona letteratura, in cui si possono ricostruire percorsi di indagine sia socio-culturale che psicologica ed esistenziale. E al lettore attento si pongono impliciti interrogativi.
L'edizione da me letta è stata tradotta col titolo "Ritorno a Memphis".
Queste due bizzarre donne ultracinquantenni, nubili, dalla doppia o tripla vita, aggiornano il fratello sull'ottuogenario padre rimasto recentemente vedovo : "qualsiasi idea sbagliata avesse di sé e del mondo, il vecchio gentiluomo sapeva senza dubbio quali vestiti gli stavano bene". Questo dunque è il soggetto.
Le due attempate signorine raccontano, con certa ironia, come il padre fosse dapprima spesso invitato a cena da compassate signore sue coetanee. Poi come avesse cominciato a frequentare donne più giovani in locali dai nomi pittoreschi. Infine l'anziano comunica di voler unirsi in matrimonio con un'adeguata signora.
Dicono pertanto al fratello che un suo urgente ritorno a Memphis si rende quanto mai necessario.
A differenza di altri scrittori americani contemporanei, spesso alle prese con storie scioccanti o vicende estreme, Taylor qui rappresenta la 'normalità' di una famiglia, benché piuttosto complicata, nei suoi avvicendamenti.
Il linguaggio non vuole stupire o provocare, bensì fluisce con piacevole naturalezza, velato qua e là di sottile umorismo.
Il libro non contiene pagine 'da antologia', né frasi memorabili. Si presenta però come un romanzo di buona letteratura, in cui si possono ricostruire percorsi di indagine sia socio-culturale che psicologica ed esistenziale. E al lettore attento si pongono impliciti interrogativi.
L'edizione da me letta è stata tradotta col titolo "Ritorno a Memphis".
May 9, 2017
4.4�
This was a blind book date for me. After reading James Lee Burke’s Pulitzer nominated novel from 1987 I was curious about the one that won the prize.
When interviewed about his book said that the main question A Summons to Memphis raised for him was, “how successful are we ever in understanding what has happened to us? That’s what I want to suggest in the novel� and for me his suggestion came through loud and clear.
A by-product of family dysfunction myself and collaterally damaged from poor parental decisions and behavior, the whole premise of this story was personally resonant.
Unresolved conflict in the Carver family will lead the reader through revenge, resolution, and redemption. By the end you will feel like you know them, but perhaps more importantly, yourself more fully. Southern literary prose in its finest hour.
This was a blind book date for me. After reading James Lee Burke’s Pulitzer nominated novel from 1987 I was curious about the one that won the prize.
When interviewed about his book said that the main question A Summons to Memphis raised for him was, “how successful are we ever in understanding what has happened to us? That’s what I want to suggest in the novel� and for me his suggestion came through loud and clear.
A by-product of family dysfunction myself and collaterally damaged from poor parental decisions and behavior, the whole premise of this story was personally resonant.
Unresolved conflict in the Carver family will lead the reader through revenge, resolution, and redemption. By the end you will feel like you know them, but perhaps more importantly, yourself more fully. Southern literary prose in its finest hour.
August 20, 2019
Winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize.
A wonderful read and now I’ve got another one for my 6 star shelf. There are few classic novels, that I know of, that are written about aging parents and in this case the narrator, Philip, is not enamored of his aging father either. There is well placed irony and some doses of wry humor within the pages. This story takes place in the 1970’s but there are numerous scenes of reflection going all the way back to the 1930’s.
Philip Carver, by way of his birth in Nashville and an unpopular family move to Memphis in his teenage years, is now a New York City book dealer. His elderly widowed father, once a respected attorney, and meddling sisters still live in Memphis. Philip has some deep resentment toward his father who prevented his marriage to a girl he loved in Chattanooga. The sisters have called Philip in a panic because father wants to remarry and although unspoken, the implication is that they could all lose their inheritance. As the story progresses he begins to understand just how meddlesome they are and he is not sure who he is most upset with.
5 stars. Highly recommended. The writing seems to move along effortlessly.
A wonderful read and now I’ve got another one for my 6 star shelf. There are few classic novels, that I know of, that are written about aging parents and in this case the narrator, Philip, is not enamored of his aging father either. There is well placed irony and some doses of wry humor within the pages. This story takes place in the 1970’s but there are numerous scenes of reflection going all the way back to the 1930’s.
Philip Carver, by way of his birth in Nashville and an unpopular family move to Memphis in his teenage years, is now a New York City book dealer. His elderly widowed father, once a respected attorney, and meddling sisters still live in Memphis. Philip has some deep resentment toward his father who prevented his marriage to a girl he loved in Chattanooga. The sisters have called Philip in a panic because father wants to remarry and although unspoken, the implication is that they could all lose their inheritance. As the story progresses he begins to understand just how meddlesome they are and he is not sure who he is most upset with.
5 stars. Highly recommended. The writing seems to move along effortlessly.
November 19, 2020
If you reflected deeply on your life, but you left out anything that's at all interesting and you mostly thought about your dad's wardrobe, that'd be this book.
July 1, 2018
Ostensibly, A Summons to Memphis is about an adult son being called home by his older sisters to prevent the marriage of his eighty-one year old widower father. The pace for the book, particularly the beginning, is a slow one, reminding one of a soft Southern drawl, and it is essential that the reader is paying attention to all the subtle nuances of meaning laid between what the narrator says and where the truth actually lies.
The circumstances of his father’s old-age rebellion against the control of the sisters, causes Phillip, our narrator, to re-examine his life, the character of his father, and the impact of his fathers decisions upon the family at large. As he begins to see the prevention of the marriage as an act of revenge by the sisters, he begins to reconstruct the origin of the complicated relationship all these children share with their sometimes overbearing and always self-consumed father.
Initially, it is hard to muster much sympathy for Phillip, this fully grown man who seems to operate from such a cold center, but as the book progresses, we begin to see him more clearly and how he has been shaped by the events of his life: the original abrupt move to Memphis from Nashville, the separation from his first and perhaps only love, the usurping of his place in his father’s life by his own best friend, Alex Mercer. Along with his own revelations, we begin to see the sisters more clearly as well, the sacrifices they have made for a father, who possessed more than loved them, and their need to prevent the disruption of this relationship by the admission of any new dynamic, let along a new wife.
I seems to me that Taylor’s interest here is family connections and how individuals inside the circle are affected by one another. In bending to their father’s will, the mother and the children are shaped and reshaped into some lesser version of who they were or who they could have been. The older brother, Georgie, is so anxious to escape that he joins the armed forces and puts himself in the midst of a conflict from which he never returns. Phillip’s relationship with his father, with Alex, and with his live-in girlfriend, Holly, are all affected by Phillip’s early experiences and his changing perceptions of who his father is.
The saddest part of this, for me, was
When I initially finished the book, I was wondering whether I believed it merited a Pulitzer. After a little reflection, I decided it was one of those books that seems to have a simple story, that could never be said to be plot driven, and that appears to only scratch the surface of its characters, but when you keep thinking about it, you realize you are peeling the layers away, like the skin of an onion, and there is a great deal of substance underneath.
The circumstances of his father’s old-age rebellion against the control of the sisters, causes Phillip, our narrator, to re-examine his life, the character of his father, and the impact of his fathers decisions upon the family at large. As he begins to see the prevention of the marriage as an act of revenge by the sisters, he begins to reconstruct the origin of the complicated relationship all these children share with their sometimes overbearing and always self-consumed father.
Initially, it is hard to muster much sympathy for Phillip, this fully grown man who seems to operate from such a cold center, but as the book progresses, we begin to see him more clearly and how he has been shaped by the events of his life: the original abrupt move to Memphis from Nashville, the separation from his first and perhaps only love, the usurping of his place in his father’s life by his own best friend, Alex Mercer. Along with his own revelations, we begin to see the sisters more clearly as well, the sacrifices they have made for a father, who possessed more than loved them, and their need to prevent the disruption of this relationship by the admission of any new dynamic, let along a new wife.
I seems to me that Taylor’s interest here is family connections and how individuals inside the circle are affected by one another. In bending to their father’s will, the mother and the children are shaped and reshaped into some lesser version of who they were or who they could have been. The older brother, Georgie, is so anxious to escape that he joins the armed forces and puts himself in the midst of a conflict from which he never returns. Phillip’s relationship with his father, with Alex, and with his live-in girlfriend, Holly, are all affected by Phillip’s early experiences and his changing perceptions of who his father is.
The saddest part of this, for me, was
When I initially finished the book, I was wondering whether I believed it merited a Pulitzer. After a little reflection, I decided it was one of those books that seems to have a simple story, that could never be said to be plot driven, and that appears to only scratch the surface of its characters, but when you keep thinking about it, you realize you are peeling the layers away, like the skin of an onion, and there is a great deal of substance underneath.
April 19, 2017
As the narrator, Phillip Carver, tells his family’s story, the author Peter Taylor shows the waning way of life of genteel society in Nashville and Memphis. This book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1987.
The narrator’s father was born perhaps a generation, maybe two, after slavery on one of the family estates outside of Memphis. The pages on this birth, alone, qualify for the Pulitzer. After Vanderbilt (not Princeton) football and law degree, a partnership takes him to Nashville. He marries appropriate to his station.
The story revolves around this father. He is now a widowed octogenarian planning to marry a much younger woman, jeopardizing this children’s inheritance. The irony hangs, but is unmentioned, that the father’s actions in different ways ended the marriage plans of each of his four children, 3 of whom, now in their 50’s are still single, and one is deceased.
His son, the narrator, now an established rare book dealer and living in Manhattan, shows how much of his father’s control was based on his bearing, appearance, will and the social standing of his landowning family. He contrasts the Nashville style with the Memphis style. He shows how his father’s friendships with younger men who looked up to him re-enforced his aura, and likely, his self-image.
Silently, and in the background, the family’s staff (only a few are called by name) who are from the family estate, most likely the descendants of the homestead’s slaves, fix meals, move household goods and drive the family.
This is a short book, and almost every sentence matters.
I highly recommend it for readers who like character studies and portrayals of place and time.
The narrator’s father was born perhaps a generation, maybe two, after slavery on one of the family estates outside of Memphis. The pages on this birth, alone, qualify for the Pulitzer. After Vanderbilt (not Princeton) football and law degree, a partnership takes him to Nashville. He marries appropriate to his station.
The story revolves around this father. He is now a widowed octogenarian planning to marry a much younger woman, jeopardizing this children’s inheritance. The irony hangs, but is unmentioned, that the father’s actions in different ways ended the marriage plans of each of his four children, 3 of whom, now in their 50’s are still single, and one is deceased.
His son, the narrator, now an established rare book dealer and living in Manhattan, shows how much of his father’s control was based on his bearing, appearance, will and the social standing of his landowning family. He contrasts the Nashville style with the Memphis style. He shows how his father’s friendships with younger men who looked up to him re-enforced his aura, and likely, his self-image.
Silently, and in the background, the family’s staff (only a few are called by name) who are from the family estate, most likely the descendants of the homestead’s slaves, fix meals, move household goods and drive the family.
This is a short book, and almost every sentence matters.
I highly recommend it for readers who like character studies and portrayals of place and time.
May 26, 2021
This is a hard book for me to review and rate. It moved me despite the fact that my Midwestern middle-class upbringingwas completely different than Phillip's wealthy aristocratic southern family. Families can have similar problems at any income level.
The book begins with Phillip Carver's sisters sending a letter requesting he return to Memphis to help stop their father from marrying in his twilight years and leaving their inheritance to his new bride. Of course, it's never just about money in inheritance fights. Money somehowserves as proof of love and/or compensation for familial scars. My job requires me to get into the financial details of many people's lives andemotions always come up. When it comes to inheritance, It's not the size of the pot, but theflow of the distribution.
In this story, the Carver family was well respected in the high society of Nashville until a scandal caused their abrupt removal to Memphis. "Removal" is how it's always described by Phillip because for everyone but their father, it was involuntary. This move comes at a time when Phillip, the youngest of 4 siblings is around 11 - 12 years old (from what I could gather). He's just starting to have crushes on girls and feels confident and happy. His older brother Georgie is a couple of years older and his older sisters are a year apartat 19 & 20. His oldest sister Betsy came out of her debutanteyear in a serious relationship about to be engaged andJosephinewas just getting started on hers. Their mother is in her 40's had been in Nashville all her life.
The move changes the trajectory of all their lives as does more direct interferencefrom Philip's father. As adults, all of the children take their revenge. Philip and Gorgie do it in a passive-aggressiveway by removing themselves from Memphis as soon as they can. The sisters take a more aggressive route stayingnear to flaunt theirindependent success and keep a watchful eye.
I was bored through parts where Taylor took too longto give backgroundwith uninteresting minutiae. In the end, it won me over because it made me think of my own family and many others I've known and how complicated feelings in a family can be when there are blows thatcause permanent fractures in it. Here, it's a move that causes the blow, in another family it could be a divorce, in another a death, another an addiction, and on and on. Changes can be especially hard when they come during adolescence. I think this won the Pulitzer for the universal nature of it, including therevelations that Philp and his girlfriend have at the end. I'd say this one is 3.5 for me. I'm glad I read it.
The book begins with Phillip Carver's sisters sending a letter requesting he return to Memphis to help stop their father from marrying in his twilight years and leaving their inheritance to his new bride. Of course, it's never just about money in inheritance fights. Money somehowserves as proof of love and/or compensation for familial scars. My job requires me to get into the financial details of many people's lives andemotions always come up. When it comes to inheritance, It's not the size of the pot, but theflow of the distribution.
In this story, the Carver family was well respected in the high society of Nashville until a scandal caused their abrupt removal to Memphis. "Removal" is how it's always described by Phillip because for everyone but their father, it was involuntary. This move comes at a time when Phillip, the youngest of 4 siblings is around 11 - 12 years old (from what I could gather). He's just starting to have crushes on girls and feels confident and happy. His older brother Georgie is a couple of years older and his older sisters are a year apartat 19 & 20. His oldest sister Betsy came out of her debutanteyear in a serious relationship about to be engaged andJosephinewas just getting started on hers. Their mother is in her 40's had been in Nashville all her life.
The move changes the trajectory of all their lives as does more direct interferencefrom Philip's father. As adults, all of the children take their revenge. Philip and Gorgie do it in a passive-aggressiveway by removing themselves from Memphis as soon as they can. The sisters take a more aggressive route stayingnear to flaunt theirindependent success and keep a watchful eye.
I was bored through parts where Taylor took too longto give backgroundwith uninteresting minutiae. In the end, it won me over because it made me think of my own family and many others I've known and how complicated feelings in a family can be when there are blows thatcause permanent fractures in it. Here, it's a move that causes the blow, in another family it could be a divorce, in another a death, another an addiction, and on and on. Changes can be especially hard when they come during adolescence. I think this won the Pulitzer for the universal nature of it, including therevelations that Philp and his girlfriend have at the end. I'd say this one is 3.5 for me. I'm glad I read it.
November 13, 2012
This book was incredibly tedious. It was like Holden Caulfield and Charles Dickens had a horrible ugly child. Not only is the style repetitive to the point of frustration, but the narrator is a total pile of crap. He is selfish and completely unaware of anyone else in his life having feelings or desires. He assumes that all the men who accompany his sisters are paid escorts, because who could possibly find middle-aged women attractive. He believes that his sweetheart allowed herself to be sent to Brazil. He says that it was so foolish of his partner to aspire to be a big-time publisher when her chief function as a woman is to serve men. His brother just went off and got himself killed. Clearly.
I could not disagree more with the quote on the cover from the New York Times. I feel like I don't know any of these characters because they are being filtered through someone so self-centered and narcissistic that they don't even seem real. Reading this book felt like a chore and by the end all I cared about was finishing it. I wish a different character had told the story because I might've cared about what happened. It had so much potential. I am so frustrated and upset about this book I can't even form a coherent review.
I do not understand how this book won a Pulitzer Prize. Must have been a slow year where no one published anything.
September 2, 2015
I've just finished 'The Help' and a re-read of 'To Kill A Mockingbird' so my Read-ometer is in serious need of recalibration. I know there is a good short story at the core of this but the narrator's emotional remoteness failed to pull me in. So I'm just going to say it was missing that Southern "warmth" I always look for. I did on the other hand thoroughly enjoy all of the historical information and cultural descriptions of Nashville and Memphis. That was a treat. For anyone that can easily slow down to the pace of a Henry James novel, this could be greatly appreciated.
October 30, 2024
Premio Pulitzer de 1987 bastante olvidado hoy en día. Y puedo entender por qué.
El conflicto se plantea en las primeras líneas: las dos hermanas mayores del protagonista (narrador en primera persona) le piden que vuelva al hogar para impedir que su padre (viudo) vuelva a casarse. A continuación, siguen más de un centenar de páginas en las que el protagonista se dedica a explicar el contexto con gran redundancia y elucubración, pintando y repintando sobre lo ya pintado (Memphis, el padre, la madre, las hermanas, la mudanza a Memphis en plena adolescencia, las rupturas sentimentales). Cuando llega, por fin, el momento en que el protagonista relata su vuelta al hogar paterno, la escena se resuelve de la forma más breve y anticlimática posible. Siguen casi ochenta páginas en las que el protagonista le da unas cuantas vueltas más al retrato que ya había hecho de su padre en las cien primeras páginas y la novela concluye, está vez sí, con una escena memorable (y unas pocas páginas más de coda). Lamentablemente, por más pinceladas que el narrador ha ido dando a lo largo de la novela para perfilar con precisión personajes y circunstancias, las dos hermanas (los personajes más interesantes del elenco) no parecen merecer nunca un retrato matizado.
A pesar de todo y aunque creo que la novela no dejará mucha huella en mi memoria, tengo que decir que he disfrutado bastante la lectura, sobre todo por el estilo, formal, minucioso y modulado (como de epígono de Henry James).
(Me parece que se me ha pegado algo de ese estilo en la reseña porque la leo y me noto un poco más repelente de lo habitual.)
El conflicto se plantea en las primeras líneas: las dos hermanas mayores del protagonista (narrador en primera persona) le piden que vuelva al hogar para impedir que su padre (viudo) vuelva a casarse. A continuación, siguen más de un centenar de páginas en las que el protagonista se dedica a explicar el contexto con gran redundancia y elucubración, pintando y repintando sobre lo ya pintado (Memphis, el padre, la madre, las hermanas, la mudanza a Memphis en plena adolescencia, las rupturas sentimentales). Cuando llega, por fin, el momento en que el protagonista relata su vuelta al hogar paterno, la escena se resuelve de la forma más breve y anticlimática posible. Siguen casi ochenta páginas en las que el protagonista le da unas cuantas vueltas más al retrato que ya había hecho de su padre en las cien primeras páginas y la novela concluye, está vez sí, con una escena memorable (y unas pocas páginas más de coda). Lamentablemente, por más pinceladas que el narrador ha ido dando a lo largo de la novela para perfilar con precisión personajes y circunstancias, las dos hermanas (los personajes más interesantes del elenco) no parecen merecer nunca un retrato matizado.
A pesar de todo y aunque creo que la novela no dejará mucha huella en mi memoria, tengo que decir que he disfrutado bastante la lectura, sobre todo por el estilo, formal, minucioso y modulado (como de epígono de Henry James).
(Me parece que se me ha pegado algo de ese estilo en la reseña porque la leo y me noto un poco más repelente de lo habitual.)
September 11, 2015
If I could find one word to describe this novel it would be removed. In fact this word is used in abundance by the author and ad nauseam throughout the entire novel in all forms - remove, removed, removal and removing.
The first removal of the Carter family was when their societal status and their beloved home in Nashville is taken away from them by their father. Mr. Carter is conned and disgraced by his dear friend Mr. Shackleford and the family must move from Nashville to the other, and considered less grand, side of the state to the city of Memphis. This removing of the family from their grand bird nest in Nashville to a quite nice but lesser nest in Memphis is the beginning of what will become a very dysfunctional and wealthy Memphis family. A family where Mr. Carter rules over his children like a puffed-up and elegant rooster. Even into adulthood, his grown and intelligent children are somehow under his authoritative wing. One grown child even runs away from his father's home in the middle of the night to live in Manhattan with the help of his two older grown sisters rather than declare his independence from dear old dad to his face. There the son resides until he is summoned back to Memphis by his two sisters when a now widowed father is reportedly strutting around town with younger ladies and has decided to marry again in his early 80's.
Ah, me. There are some good things about this book, but what I cannot comprehend is how this short Southern story was somehow stretched 209 pages into a novel that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1987. It's no To Kill A Mocking Bird, A Death in the Family or The Color Purple. The entire book is written by the escaped to Manhattan son and is, in essence, a bunch of long, rambling notes about the family's removal to Memphis and how that move formed the rest of the families lives.
In the end, removed was also how I felt about this book. Separate - divided on how I felt about it. I give it 3 ŷ stars, but really it is an okay 2 1/2 star read for me.
The first removal of the Carter family was when their societal status and their beloved home in Nashville is taken away from them by their father. Mr. Carter is conned and disgraced by his dear friend Mr. Shackleford and the family must move from Nashville to the other, and considered less grand, side of the state to the city of Memphis. This removing of the family from their grand bird nest in Nashville to a quite nice but lesser nest in Memphis is the beginning of what will become a very dysfunctional and wealthy Memphis family. A family where Mr. Carter rules over his children like a puffed-up and elegant rooster. Even into adulthood, his grown and intelligent children are somehow under his authoritative wing. One grown child even runs away from his father's home in the middle of the night to live in Manhattan with the help of his two older grown sisters rather than declare his independence from dear old dad to his face. There the son resides until he is summoned back to Memphis by his two sisters when a now widowed father is reportedly strutting around town with younger ladies and has decided to marry again in his early 80's.
Ah, me. There are some good things about this book, but what I cannot comprehend is how this short Southern story was somehow stretched 209 pages into a novel that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1987. It's no To Kill A Mocking Bird, A Death in the Family or The Color Purple. The entire book is written by the escaped to Manhattan son and is, in essence, a bunch of long, rambling notes about the family's removal to Memphis and how that move formed the rest of the families lives.
In the end, removed was also how I felt about this book. Separate - divided on how I felt about it. I give it 3 ŷ stars, but really it is an okay 2 1/2 star read for me.
November 13, 2015
I guess you can count me in the camp of people who wonder why this book was selected to win the Pulitzer Prize. Admittedly, it presents a slice of unfamiliar life in America, specifically Tennessee, circa the early-1930s. This is a fictional reflection by a man who left a domineering father to move to New York City. He is summoned back to Memphis, his family’s adopted city, several times during the book, particularly when his father is planning to remarry at the age of 81. His two spinster sisters in their 50s, wish to stop the marriage. But the reasons for this should remain unknown to the reader, for the question of why is the only thing that compelled me to read the book to the finish.
This is a wealthy and dysfunctional family. I struggled with understanding them. Partly, I believe, because I also struggled with the narration. For example, take this passage:
“During all that long, lonely week since Holly’s departure I had felt so low that it seemed momentarily I was really glad there was somebody in Memphis who had something wrong too. Then I told myself it wasn’t only that. Rather, I was simply happy to have a distraction of any kind whatsoever from my morbid thoughts about my future of living alone.�
There’s nothing really wrong with it, but this is no Hemingway, folks. I did adjust as the book went along, but thank goodness it was short. And I should not be one to judge as my measly little musings on these pages are as close as I’ll ever get to writing a book. And Marilynne Robinson’s review in the NY Times puts me to shame.
This is a wealthy and dysfunctional family. I struggled with understanding them. Partly, I believe, because I also struggled with the narration. For example, take this passage:
“During all that long, lonely week since Holly’s departure I had felt so low that it seemed momentarily I was really glad there was somebody in Memphis who had something wrong too. Then I told myself it wasn’t only that. Rather, I was simply happy to have a distraction of any kind whatsoever from my morbid thoughts about my future of living alone.�
There’s nothing really wrong with it, but this is no Hemingway, folks. I did adjust as the book went along, but thank goodness it was short. And I should not be one to judge as my measly little musings on these pages are as close as I’ll ever get to writing a book. And Marilynne Robinson’s review in the NY Times puts me to shame.
January 18, 2021
Another puzzling Pulitzer Prize winner. A short read which should have been much shorter. Tedious and repetitive. Only at the very end do you get any real appreciation for the push-pull of these father-son and brother-sisters relationships.
Past history seems never to be buried with this family, yet never confronted head on either.
Past history seems never to be buried with this family, yet never confronted head on either.
February 16, 2018
This is a beautifully written book about family and both the love and pain they inflict upon us. It is about perspective and how each of us sees the same thing differently, which is why each adult sibling in a family can remember the same facts and events very differently from one another. It is about the pain of the loss of a parent, and the shock of seeing your long-married parent with someone new. It is about aging... it is about death... it is about life. These characters are true to real life. They feel like people we all know. They feel like people we like and respect. And, at times, they feel like people we mock. The exploration of humanity in this book resonated deeply with me, as I am 55 and have lost both parents. I think if I had read this one at 25 I would have been much less moved by the story. I would not have had enough life experience at that time to really take it in and understand the depth of it.
June 25, 2016
3.5***
Philip Carver has escaped his controlling father and now lives in New York with his much younger Jewish girlfriend. But when he gets a surprise phone call from his older sister, followed only minutes later by a call from his second sister, and then from an old family friend, he knows he has been summoned to Memphis to help deal with the “disaster.� A mere two years after his mother’s death, his 80-something father has plans to remarry and his adult children have no intention of letting him do so.
George Carver has always been the head of his family, and while he was gentlemanly and generous with his children he also thwarted any potential romantic relationship they might have. It began when he moves his family to Memphis from Nashville after he has been financially ruined and socially humiliated by a long-term friend and colleague. He ensures that his sons and daughters also break off all ties with Nashville. In Memphis, the family seems to find the new start they needed. They are members of the best country club, the girls join the Junior League, they live in a lovely home � they are just like any other wealthy and well-born Memphis family.
The children love and respect their father, but they rebel in quiet ways to distance themselves and find independence. Now, some thirty years after their move, the middle-aged sisters will get their revenge by controlling their widower father, and prohibiting any kind of romance in his life as he once ended their own hopes of romance.
Taylor gives us a work that explores the complex relationships within one family � the wrongs done to one another, resentment built over decades, petty reprisals, and subtle revenge. I usually enjoy character-based novels. I loved Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping and Paul Harding’s Tinkers , and this work reminds me of those. But this is a very slow read, and I’m struggling with what to write because I’m not really sure how to react to these characters. The last twenty or so pages are poignant and lovely, and I finally felt some connection to Philip and his father and sisters.
Philip Carver has escaped his controlling father and now lives in New York with his much younger Jewish girlfriend. But when he gets a surprise phone call from his older sister, followed only minutes later by a call from his second sister, and then from an old family friend, he knows he has been summoned to Memphis to help deal with the “disaster.� A mere two years after his mother’s death, his 80-something father has plans to remarry and his adult children have no intention of letting him do so.
George Carver has always been the head of his family, and while he was gentlemanly and generous with his children he also thwarted any potential romantic relationship they might have. It began when he moves his family to Memphis from Nashville after he has been financially ruined and socially humiliated by a long-term friend and colleague. He ensures that his sons and daughters also break off all ties with Nashville. In Memphis, the family seems to find the new start they needed. They are members of the best country club, the girls join the Junior League, they live in a lovely home � they are just like any other wealthy and well-born Memphis family.
The children love and respect their father, but they rebel in quiet ways to distance themselves and find independence. Now, some thirty years after their move, the middle-aged sisters will get their revenge by controlling their widower father, and prohibiting any kind of romance in his life as he once ended their own hopes of romance.
Taylor gives us a work that explores the complex relationships within one family � the wrongs done to one another, resentment built over decades, petty reprisals, and subtle revenge. I usually enjoy character-based novels. I loved Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping and Paul Harding’s Tinkers , and this work reminds me of those. But this is a very slow read, and I’m struggling with what to write because I’m not really sure how to react to these characters. The last twenty or so pages are poignant and lovely, and I finally felt some connection to Philip and his father and sisters.
September 9, 2016
I am bewildered. I feel empty inside as if I just spent an hour watching tele novellas. Was there actually a story in that heap of recollections? They moved, and it messed up their relationships and the kids are bitter about it. Ok. They never grow out of it. The father makes up with the guy who was the reason for the move. He dies. This story is like driving through Kansas. Sorry, Kansas.
Midpoint review:
I find this book boring but not slow. He just keeps dancing around the same set of events over and over again. I keep wondering when something is going to happen. Each chapter is a hiccup of the prior, and he goes back into his past and then just barely ooches (stop autocorrecting me, not ouches, or pooches - ooches) out a teenie little advancement toward finding out what's going on with his father's engagement. Maybe the dancing around the story is the point. Maybe that's his gimmick to illustrate his point, which I can only guess is that life is a dance with repeating steps and changing partners??
However, as a former Tennessee-an I love the Tennessee lore.
Midpoint review:
I find this book boring but not slow. He just keeps dancing around the same set of events over and over again. I keep wondering when something is going to happen. Each chapter is a hiccup of the prior, and he goes back into his past and then just barely ooches (stop autocorrecting me, not ouches, or pooches - ooches) out a teenie little advancement toward finding out what's going on with his father's engagement. Maybe the dancing around the story is the point. Maybe that's his gimmick to illustrate his point, which I can only guess is that life is a dance with repeating steps and changing partners??
However, as a former Tennessee-an I love the Tennessee lore.
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