The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 4 January 2007
by Peter Taylor
One evening shortly after his live-in girlfriend has left him, Philip Carver receives a phone call from each of his sisters. They tell him that their father, down in Memphis, has been dallying with a woman far too young for him. They are seeking Philip's help in averting the disaster that would be the old man's marriage to this floozy. Thus opens up a broad portrait of the family we see through Philip's reflections as he prepares for the trip, and experiences its affects. George Carver is a man who comes from a genteel Southern upbringing, raising his family in Nashville in the opening decades of the 20th century. When he is betrayed by his close friend and business associate, all he can think of doing is moving the whole family to Memphis where he can start again. But the kids don't have it so easy. Starting over isn't a simple task, and it doesn't help that Dad constantly meddles in their lives, mainly to keep them from the happiness of settling down with the mates of their choice. One sibling gives up altogether and goes off to get himself killed in World War 2. Eventually, we get back to the task at hand. Philip gets to Memphis to find his spinster sisters have already been manipulating the situation to their satisfaction. Witnessing the petty cruelties of his family from afar, he begins to re-examine the myths of his family's history and his own. He attempts to forgive and forget the crimes his father has visited upon the children. We all know how much of a minefield that can be. This goes largely unexamined here, though. What we get is a layered but not terribly subtle exploration of one Southern family's character. It is a portrait, also, of the South (the upper South as Taylor portrays it). The book is a ripe first-person account of that family, its machinations and its pains, and the complex and sometimes bizarre social milieu in which it was formed. The book is dense, but also rich and strangely compelling.
(For this book, Taylor was awarded the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.)