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A Summons to Memphis

3.58 of 5 stars 3.58 · rating details · 1,910 ratings · 157 reviews

One of the most celebrated novels of its time, the Pulitzer Prize winner A Summons to Memphis introduces the Carver family, natives of Nashville, residents, with the exception of Phillip, of Memphis, Tennessee.

During the twilight of a Sunday afternoon in March, New York book editor Phillip Carver receives an urgent phone call from each of his older, unmarried sisters. They...more

Paperback, 224 pages

Published June 29th 1999 by Vintage (first published June 29th 1986)

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Aug 17, 2012 Bill Kerwin rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 hi...more

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Feb 11, 2008 Robert Beveridge rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: finished, owned-and-gave-away

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?...more 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. (less)

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Nov 29, 2011 Mike rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Mike by: The Modern Library: The Best 200 Novels Written in English Since 1950

Shelves: 20th-century, southern-literature, pulitzer-prize-winner, nation-book-critics-award, southern-class-and-culture, fathers-and-sons, fathers-and-daughters

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, cott...more

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Jul 26, 2007 Anne rated it 4 of 5 stars

In general, I am a big fan of Southern Literature. I think the history of the South lends itself to stories about families and secrets and the struggle between doing what's right/for yourself and doing what is expected of you by others - all themes which I find quite interesting. A Summons To Memphis is told from the perspective of Philip, the younger brother of two meddling sisters. The book opens with their plea for his to return home from New York to help prevent their aging widower father fr...more

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Aug 29, 2008 Kevin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

“Both my sisters always had a good deal to say about the appropriateness and inappropriateness of other people’s dress. This may seem strange in the light of how it was they usually dressed themselves. But somehow one felt that their own attire could not and was not intended to be taken straight. Rather, their own attire seemed offered as a criticism of how those about them dressed. Or so I understood it. It seemed a kind of cruel joke between themselves and the beholder if the beholder understo...more

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Mar 20, 2009 Tim rated it 4 of 5 stars

I love Peter Taylor's short stories, the small details and human insights, the self-deluded narrators and characters. I liked this slow moving, repetitive novel that recounts a family's broken relationships through the vantage of the youngest son, now almost fifty. In the narrator's youth, the father moved the family to Memphis after a business partner's corruption became known in Nashville. The move disrupts the family and the father proceeds to destroy the potential marriages of his two daught...more

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Mar 01, 2013 Mac rated it 3 of 5 stars

On subject matter alone, A Summons to Memphis spoke to me. The complexity of family relationships, specifically conflicts between parent and child...the need for forgiving and forgetting in those relationships...the role of memory in characterizing the relationships...are all issues that are often on my mind. A central event in the story--being well settled during childhood in one town and then moving to another (lesser) town--also stimulated my insights and reminiscences because I had my own si...more

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Oct 19, 2012 Book Concierge rated it 3 of 5 stars

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...more 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.
(less)

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Jul 08, 2010 Dwight added it

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Taylor’s prose ambles along, providing rich detail to invoke an early to mid-20th-century portrait of the South. While it is easy to scoff at the premise that the family’s move could have such an impact on the members, I think Taylor means it as an allegory for Southern difficulty moving from past to present. Even if that’s the case, it feels rather clumsy and contrived even though it occasionally provides insight into some of the problems that needed to b...more http://bookcents.blogspot.com/2010/07...

Taylor’s prose ambles along, providing rich detail to invoke an early to mid-20th-century portrait of the South. While it is easy to scoff at the premise that the family’s move could have such an impact on the members, I think Taylor means it as an allegory for Southern difficulty moving from past to present. Even if that’s the case, it feels rather clumsy and contrived even though it occasionally provides insight into some of the problems that needed to be addressed. His comments on the mother, who kept her wild side in check with a thin veneer of the genteel manners expected of her, highlights some of these problems: “For Mother it meant a total alteration of her role within our family and at the same time a kind of personal liberation for which she was not prepared and of which she did not know how to make an advantage.”

Phillip rejoices at his liberation and freedom in moving to New York City. “Oh the foolishness of Memphis ways! And I felt a surge of happiness that I had got away so long ago.” As the reader already knows, and Phillip has to find out, his physical move has done nothing to loosen the complex ties to his family and the region. Taylor’s use of Phillip as the narrator, someone physically and emotionally distant from the other characters, proves to be an effective technique in revealing what happens.

The pacing of the book, however, can be maddening. A garden hose, coiled up but slightly tilted, could represent the story’s progress—constantly looping into the past with only marginal advancement in the story. When major plot points appear they feel rushed, as if these points exist only for more endless looping back in time. When this approach is done well, as in Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End, each circle into the past builds toward a climatic payoff. Unfortunately there is no payoff here. The constant repetition of words and phrases ended up annoying me instead of building up expectations (which is just as well). Phillip’s “revelation”, if you can call it that, is juvenile at best, which may be Taylor’s point. The entire family is so emotionally stunted that any progress made will be in small increments or, more likely, illusory. The distance between Phillip and his family ends up being a problem since it is more than a physical gap—he doesn’t understand them so there is little he can provide to the reader. We don’t really get to know the sisters and Phillip’s shallow attempt at understanding his father falls flat.

Even though I hate saying anything bad about a book that does have some genuine good moments, I would recommend exploring Taylor’s short stories instead of A Summons to Memphis. (less)

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Aug 08, 2009 Consuela rated it 3 of 5 stars

This novella won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 and I suppose this might have started me off with very high expectations for it. In general I love southern books, having been reared by a southern grandmother. This book is like watching the ice melt in a tall glass of iced tea (a southern staple). It happens very slowly. As I've read in other reviews, this book does not have a lot of action. It's really about one event: the upheaval of a Nashville family forced to move to Memphis because of the betra...more This novella won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 and I suppose this might have started me off with very high expectations for it. In general I love southern books, having been reared by a southern grandmother. This book is like watching the ice melt in a tall glass of iced tea (a southern staple). It happens very slowly. As I've read in other reviews, this book does not have a lot of action. It's really about one event: the upheaval of a Nashville family forced to move to Memphis because of the betrayal of the patriarch's business partner, and the impact this has on his family, his wife and 4 children.

There's an awful lot about the 2 sisters, now utterly silly middle-age spinsters, who at one point in the book actually make it seem like a horror novel. They exact their revenge on their father because he prevented both of them from marrying their chosen beaux. The oldest brother escapes by enlisting and is killed in WWII. The mother takes to her bed and pretty much stays there for 30 years. I loved this passage about the actual leaving of Nashville for her and the family. "It was not until she was in the car and we were all about ready to venture forth that she seemed to understand the finality of the moment. She was seated in the front of the Packard when Father got into the driver's seat and closed the car door. Suddenly at that moment, when he firmly closed his door, she broke into deep sobbing and for several moments wept uncontrollably. We all crowded around the car, the four grown-up or nearly grown-up children and the three black servants. Father took her into his arms, and I shall always have the feeling, though of course I do not think it literally true, that it was the last time he ever took her in his arms. Then just as suddenly as she had begun, she ceased weeping. With her eyes still teary she smiled and said that she did not wish to leave a trail of tears."

The book is about forgiving and forgetting. Can you really have one without the other? Remarkably the last few pages picked up considerably, so don't give up if you find yourself lulled by this very southern book. (less)

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Apr 26, 2011 Longfellow rated it 3 of 5 stars

Reasons to be interested: Pulitzer Prize winner (1987), southern fiction, Memphis/Nashville, family relationships (father/son/siblings), memories of friendships/squelched romance. Also, in a lifetime of writing, this is only Taylor's second novel, published at the age of 70.

I suspect on a scale of literary perfection Taylor's novel would easily rank above average for its use of various devices and techniques of the fiction-writing craft. Because I remain a mostly for-pleasure reader, this remain...more

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Jan 16, 2013 J. Travis Moger rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor is a story about a relatively well-off Southern family whose fortunes take a turn for the worse because of the father's corrupt business partner. They move from Nashville to Memphis to start over and distance themselves from the culprit and their painful experience. That move haunts the family, and the father's need to control the lives of his children even into adulthood is repaid in kind. I listened to the book on tape, which was a little disappointing sin...more

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Aug 14, 2012 Beth rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: pulitzer

This is a beautifully crafted book. Phillip Carver is summonned back to Memphis by his sisters after their father becomes romantically involved with a new partner following the death of their mother. From this premise unfolds a complex tale of Memphis culture and family politics. The family had moved in the children's teen years from Nashville, in the Upper South, to Memphis, in the Deep South in the years just before WWII. The move leaves scars on each of the family members, except perhaps fath...more

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Feb 23, 2012 Pam rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Fans of Southern Literature

Recommended to Pam by: College English Teacher

A college teacher recommended this book to me over 20 years ago but I just got around to reading it and I'm glad I did. To begin with I thoroughly enjoyed his sentence construction and very good grammer. In that respect it was a pleasure to read.
I will have to admit that for awhile the story seemed a little tedious to me because it took him so long to tell us something and then he would repeat it more than once but in a little different context. At first I thought that this book was just a shor...more

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Jan 10, 2010 Diana rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Diana by: Lillie

A subtle, funny, touching story about a Southern family and the ways that the father's decisions and character have life-long effects on his children, and the absurd and sad ways that those children try and seek their genteel revenge.

The protagonist is a middle-aged man from Nashville by way of Memphis, an uprooting from one Tennessee city to another that Taylor leads us to believe is the turning point in the man's life. He now lives in New York, co-habitating in a 10th floor apartment on 82nd...more

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Jan 15, 2013 Rick rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: pulitzer-winners, southern-lit

Peter Taylor’s “A Summons to Memphis” is a delightful chronicle of a Tennessee family in transition, one moving during the 1930s from older more landed and Victorian Nashville to newer more edgy and cosmopolitan Memphis. The former had more in common with the colonial style of Richmond Virginia while the latter was distinctly shaped by the plantation soul of the Mississippi delta. Involving a family of six – including four children … two each – the tale paints the transformation in each family m...more

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May 18, 2012 Susan Gibb rated it 4 of 5 stars

I can see where some of today's readers may feel that this book is boring, lacking real page-turning excitement, and perhaps even call it a navel-gazer. It is, despite the potential for a collision course set by the narrator in the first couple pages, indeed a subtle character analysis. And, while the book is spent in background information that is meant to build up to the present scenario and give it its impact, the information is mainly the narrator's opinions on his family interaction and how...more I can see where some of today's readers may feel that this book is boring, lacking real page-turning excitement, and perhaps even call it a navel-gazer. It is, despite the potential for a collision course set by the narrator in the first couple pages, indeed a subtle character analysis. And, while the book is spent in background information that is meant to build up to the present scenario and give it its impact, the information is mainly the narrator's opinions on his family interaction and how he expects the characters to react to a family crisis.

The basic premise is a scenario that begins with phone calls from the narrator, Phillip's, two older sisters, quite upset that their widowed wealthy father is about to remarry a younger woman. Phillip's reflections on his relationship with his father, a rather distant one that he's escaped to do his own thing in New York City, and the family dynamics between the two spinster sisters and their father, who seem to manipulate the old man in a passive-aggressive resentment.

Taylor lays out an upheaval of the family when the girls were young women and Phillip was an adolescent, where a rift between their father, a lawyer, and his good friend and client, Mr. Lewis Shackleford, causes the family great personal loss and forces them to move from Nashville to Memphis. Taylor does not explain exactly what happened, and I tend to feel that we, like the children, are not supposed to "discuss" it.

Phillip has also been in touch with his childhood friend, Alex Mercer, and it's another curious relationship as Alex bonded closer with Phillip's father even as a child, and continued a fairly close communication over the decades.

What all this builds up to, via Phillip's thoughts as he prepares to answer his sisters' "summons to Memphis" to supposedly prevent the marriage of his father, would, one might think, be the major dramatic confrontation of the story. Taylor, however, handles it quickly, follows through a time beyond it, and focuses instead on another relationship, that of Phillip and his live-in girlfriend, Holly Kaplan. Even another summons to Memphis brought about by another near-crisis situation (as estimated by his two sisters), turns into more of a settling in for Phillip, a coming-to-terms of his past, his present, and his future.

Taylor wraps the drama up fairly quickly at the end, really, downplaying any expected conflict and focusing instead on how the conflicts are handled by the characters, and how changes, particularly in Phillip and in his girlfriend, Holly, are slowly brought about by events and the distance of time.

It's an exquisite book on family dynamics and how one is influenced through a lifetime by the past, and how one's perceptions of the past can be changed by changing one's own values and priorities. Few writers could bring this slowly told tale along with such depth and subtlety. Taylor skillfully has done so.(less)

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May 05, 2013 Sidna Bookout rated it 2 of 5 stars

It is always interesting to read what other people say about a book that I thought was dreadful. Since I have lived in Memphis for the last six years, I enjoy reading books where the city is one of the characters. However, this book seems to be more about Nashville than Memphis. Most of the references to Memphis and Memphians are negative.

The main character, Phillip Carver, is about the most self-absorbed person you can imagine. His father was a controlling jerk who kept both of Phillip's older...more

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Nov 13, 2012 Maddy rated it 1 of 5 stars

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 t...more

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Aug 28, 2010 Agnes Mack rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: pulitzer

I really liked this book. The main character (I don't have the book right here and I'm too lazy to look it up) grew up in Nashville and moved with his family to Memphis when he was in his early teens. The story takes place when he's in his 40s, living in New York. Both of his sisters and his father still lived in Memphis and were products of the social structure there. He was above it, and found the whole thing to be quite ridiculous.

Upon his mother's death, he received several phone calls from...more

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Feb 24, 2013 Carolyn rated it 4 of 5 stars

This isn't your usual book in that there isn't a clear plot and resolution. The author Peter Taylor is a short story writer and this short novel feels just like that, a snap shot of a time in the Manning family. But that's what made this book so great, each chapter was a short story with its own plot.

Two cities in Tennessee: Memphis and Nashville were life-changing for the Manning family. It is a satirical look at how people in the 1950s viewed these cities and this time period. When the Manning...more This isn't your usual book in that there isn't a clear plot and resolution. The author Peter Taylor is a short story writer and this short novel feels just like that, a snap shot of a time in the Manning family. But that's what made this book so great, each chapter was a short story with its own plot.

Two cities in Tennessee: Memphis and Nashville were life-changing for the Manning family. It is a satirical look at how people in the 1950s viewed these cities and this time period. When the Manning family moved from Nashville to Tennessee suddenly their lives changed forever. Maybe it was the culture change of each city, or maybe it was only the misperceptions of the family that they could not live the same lives they did in Nashville that they had now in Memphis.

Daughters Betsy and Josephine feel blocked by their father when they want to marry, and then go on to be independent, "influential" (wildly inappropriate dresses and a different escort every night notwithstanding), and wealthy and successful single women of their city, very unheard of in that time. Their brother Phil also feels his chance with a girl from Nashville is ended when the family is uprooted, so his sisters make sure to financially back his dream to move to New York. Brother Georgie, was the only one who adjusted to city, only to not care when he was taken into World War II and died in his first battle.

Phil is summoned back to Memphis several times by his sisters any time they fear their father may be leaving the city for the wrong reasons (marriage to a younger woman they don't like, leaving to stay in at a resort in Owl Mountain, and finally re-establishing a friendship that had caused the family to move away from Nashville in the first place). Suddenly their Father can not leave the city that has changed their lives for the good? For the bad?

I loved how the author would use flashbacks to help us put the pieces of their present day. This book isn't a heavy read and it probably won't bring up a lot of controversy, however, it did bring up points of discussion on what you thought the author was trying to tell us. But as the reader you can decide what point of this book means to you.(less)

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May 17, 2012 Kaye Hallows rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1987 and is hailed as a "classic work of American literature" but I had a hard time with the repetition of a handful of events that weren't all that interesting and didn't improve with the multiple tellings. Yes, the narrator does finally gain some insight into his seriously dysfunctional family, as a mature man in his late fifties, but this knowledge seems to arrive too late for him to be able to do anything useful with it, beyond having a few more meaningful...more

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Nov 21, 2010 Allie Martin rated it 4 of 5 stars

I generally like all books, and this is not an exception. I had to read it for a research paper, and I was pleasantly surprised that I it was not as miserable at it could have been. Although Taylor's story-weaving style can become a bit monotonous at times, it does move at a steady pace. And for those diligent enough to make it through all the dysfunctional family drama, there is a somewhat pleasant ending and a little bit of a surprise too. It you're looking for a quick read, this is not it. Bu...more

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Jul 21, 2010 Melisa rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read this book as part of my goal to read all of the Pulitzer Prize winning books. It was a pretty good book, but I didn't see it as a prize-winning work. I liked the "portrait" quality of the novel - the author spent a lot of time deconstructing each scene in a similar style as Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway" or Truman Capote's "Breakfast At Tiffany's" (although not as gripping a deconstruction as either of these). The ending was a bit awkward...I found myself wondering if the story of comin...more

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Aug 28, 2012 Megan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: borrowed-from-library, read-pulitzer-prize, read-fiction-20th-century

Some people can never move on or move past the traumatic or dramatic events in their lives. Those events trap them and define them. The narrator, Phillip Carver, and his older sisters, Betsy and Josephine, are prisoners of their collective past, shared with their selfish and domineering father, George. The children are middle-aged, live seemingly "normal" lives, and are successful at their careers (the sisters, together, own a real estate business, and Phillip works in publishing while also trad...more Some people can never move on or move past the traumatic or dramatic events in their lives. Those events trap them and define them. The narrator, Phillip Carver, and his older sisters, Betsy and Josephine, are prisoners of their collective past, shared with their selfish and domineering father, George. The children are middle-aged, live seemingly "normal" lives, and are successful at their careers (the sisters, together, own a real estate business, and Phillip works in publishing while also trading in rare books). Yet, Phillip, Betsy, and Josephine have never truly recovered from their family's relocation from high society Nashville to somewhat-less-high society ("more Mississippian") Memphis following a financial scandal, nor have they reconciled themselves with the terminations of the love affairs of their youth, affairs ended at the hands of their father, who successfully prevented any of his children from ever marrying. The children have become emotionally crippled by loyalty to the controlling George, a loyalty which George Carver has demanded, even forced. Even Phillip, who has moved away from the family to New York City, and who has been living (unmarried) with Holly Kaplan for almost 15 years, admits he has never fallen in love with another woman (not even Holly, it is presumed) since his father forcibly separated him from the love of his early twenties, Clara. He appears to be more independent, yet remains enmeshed in the family in his own way, and even from afar.

This is very much a psychological drama, told primarily through Phillip's analytic, detailed, and repetitive recollections of the family's past. He dwells on the past, turning the events over and over in his mind, seemingly searching for a detail he missed, that he failed to see at the time, trying to pry greater meaning from the occurrances that shaped he and his sisters so. Very little happens in the present, as though the present were less important, given that all of the Carvers' actions taken and decisions made in the now seem to bear the stamp of yesterday.

Several other reviewers here have compared it, stylistically, to a Henry James novel, and that comparison is spot on, not just in terms of writing style, but in terms of the high society setting. Like Henry James, Taylor's attention to detail is amazing, but sometimes excessively repetitive, causing his writing to drag. For most of the novel, however, I found his style engaging.

If you enjoy psychological analysis of family drama, and an examination of the class constraints of high society, this will be an enjoyable read for you. I'm glad I read this thought-provoking novel.(less)

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Jan 24, 2012 Mr. Kovach rated it 4 of 5 stars

I liked this book. It is about a boy who grows up in Nashville, and then moves to Tennessee when his Dad is bilked by an unscrupulous business owner. This move to Memphis, it turns out, has a tremendously negative affect on everyone in this family. I liked reading about "the way it was" in Tennessee in the 1940s through the 1990s, the way southern people (in some ways!) live differently than northerners. I respect all cultures because I find them so interesting, and even in our country we have p...more

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Sep 08, 2011 Christopher MacMillan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: pulitzer-prize-winners-and-nominees

By no means a perfect book, Peter Taylor's 'A Summons to Memphis' is still a good one -- intelligent, easy to read, quick to breeze through, and overall a good - if repetitive - story.

Phillip Carver gets phone calls from his two sisters asking him to fly to Memphis from his home in Manhattan to help stop their elderly father from marrying a younger woman. This causes Phillip to be sent head-first into memories from the past that he have haunted him all his life, and to re-examine how he feels ab...more

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Mar 07, 2013 Sharon rated it 5 of 5 stars

What a delightful surprise. I found this in a used book store in Fairhope, Alabama, and was curious. What a terrific writer Mr. Taylor is, and how I enjoyed reading about the schism between Nashville & Memphis, which I had thought I sensed when I lived in Nashville for nearly a decade in the 90's. I confess that I often wonder if people from places other than the deep South think that all Southern writers are liars and embellishers. Not so, at least in Peter Taylor's case, I think. Once agai...more

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Aug 02, 2009 Laura rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: pulitzers, completed, 2009

Taylor's novel reminded me of The Optimist's Daughter. I wasn't floored by that novel either, but at least the protagonist's emotional outbursts at the end of that novel gave me some sort of emotional connection to the plot; Taylor's did not. Indeed, his controlled and clinical account of his dealings with his sisters' and father I think dearly hurt the novel. Any one dealing with the slow deterioration of a family member, and watching their siblings manipulate that elderly person, would be at...more

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Aug 19, 2010 Luckngrace rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: award-winners

This book made me feel very uncomfortable as it brought up feelings of my own family's emotional disasters and dysfunctions. You couldn't pay me to read it again, but it is a book designed to make one think and think and think and that's what won the Pulitzer Prize. I did very much enjoy the rating comments of other readers who don't know my family, myself or my insecurities. I found their viewpoints mesmerizing and insightful. Like the narrator, I can never really go home again, but unlike him...more

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About Peter Taylor

Peter 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, f...more

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avg rating	preview: A Summons to Memphis Goodreads rating: 3.58 (1910 ratings)
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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60737.A_Summons_to_Memphis?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320541736l/60737.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60737.A_Summons_to_Memphis?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor[/url]

A Summons to Memphis

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