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by Peter
Taylor
(bio and other books)
Summons to
Memphis
is a complex tale of self-discovery by a man who has avoided such a
journey for far too long. With a Jamesian like eye for detail, Peter
Taylor captures the manners, traditions and philosophy of the Carver
family, a family of the old South, and the internal conflicts of Phillip Carver.
Phillip
Carver, a rare book collector who lives in Manhattan with a woman much
younger than he, receives a phone call from each of his two sisters
insisting that he catch the next flight out of New York to Memphis.
They tell him that their father needs him-- that dear old dad is about
to make a fool of himself by remarrying a woman far younger than he. Though he behaves as though he doesn’t want to go, it takes very little
to get him on a plane. He cannot resist.
Josephine
and Betty, the Carver sisters, are successful businesswomen, who made
their way in real estate and never married. Now in their fifties, they
still talk of the prospects for marriage in the same way they did as
young debutants. Beyond this, there is little we really know about the
sisters, and even less we know about their father. The narrator,
Phillip, is the reason for the distance. His between the reader and the characters stand-offish attitude and years of resentment
toward his
father's long-ago decision to move the family from Nashville to Memphis while he was still in
his youth continues to haunt him.
Taylor, a
master of the short story, uses many of the same techniques for his
novel that have proven so brilliant in the short story genre. The
result is less than one might expect in his more well-known genre.
Little happens except for an awakening within Phillip Carver, and our
image of the Carver family is always unclear. Nonetheless, the novel with a
deep, rhythmic pace and beautiful prose, is is rich with the ways and
thinking of southerners from a time gone by and the Carver family, like
all families, has some entertaining moments when least expected.
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