Current mood:	sore
Entry tags:	fiction, pulitzer winner

A Summons to Memphis
A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor, 1986, 209 pages.

Winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize.

Genre:fiction, pulitzer winner
Basic Overview: Philip Carver has forsaken his tyrannical father, his Nashville roots and his Memphis upbringing for a life of freedom in Manhattan. However, one evening he is called by his two unmarried sisters who ask for his help in stopping their father's remarriage to an unsuitable woman. As their father has succeeded in preventing them from marrying in their youths, it seems like turnabout is fair play.
Personal Opinion: This was an interesting book; I am honestly uncertain whether or not I liked it in the end. Certainly I appreciated the sense of poetic justice that the plot meted out [these "spoilers" can be found on the back cover of the edition], and I liked the narrative voice that closely examined his own life and those of his sisters and his parents. Philip Carver's lifelong friendship with Alex Mercer was an odd one in many ways and I am sure that it bears closer examination if I am to understand the book more fully and some day I am going to need to reread it and look at the book from that angle.
It occurs to me as I write this that what I didn't like about the book was how masculine it was. As Philip Carver was the narrator, obviously it would be a male voice narrating, but Taylor has gone further than that and this male narrator is really unable to comprehend the motives of his mother and sisters although he believes he can. The book is also devoid of the sort of detail that I like - decor, fashion, etc., which most authors provide, but the very character of Philip Carver leads him away from giving any such descriptions. In reaction to these narrative traits, I found the book rather cold and unyielding. However, as I said at the beginning, it was an interesting book, and I am glad to have read it. And I recommend it; my personal foibles about narrative style should not put off anyone else.

Book 73 of 100 this year.