Synopsis
Presents a novella, ten stories, and three one-act plays that evoke the spirit of the South and its people
Reviews
Familiar in their settings (mainly rural Tennessee of past decades), yet surprising because of the prevalence of characters who are ghosts and spirits (or those who see them), the 11 short stories and three one-act plays in this collection are vintage Taylor (A Summons to Memphis) . All are related in Taylor's deliberate, gracefully nuanced, old-fashioned (in the best sense) prose. Few yield their meanings easily; quiet and generally devoid of drama, their effect is that of a slow dawning of understanding rather than a sudden epiphany. Many of them are narrated by men who look back across a time chasm to an era of genteel Southern manners and morals that changed irrevocably after WW I. The titles themselves indicate the mood of these tales; in addition to the "oracle" of the title story, "Demons," "Nerves" "The Witch of Owl Mt. Springs" and "The Real Ghost" are stories in which Taylor distinctively blends the supernatural with the everyday. He uses this material so matter-of-factly that one never questions its validity. Curiously, however, the ghostly characters in the plays have a stronger pull on our emotions than do those characters in the stories who deal with spirits. Taylor uses spiritualism to indicate the essential puzzle of human existence. Even in the tales in which no spirits appear, facts remain in doubt. In "Cousin Aubrey," about a man who disappears and changes his life, the narrator says he likes stories "that end in a tantalyzing mystery." As Taylor draws psychological portraits of his seemingly ordinary characters, he illuminates their "tantalyzing mysteries" and the dark wellsprings of behavior.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Wraiths, ghosts, and visitations play through and aerate some of the ten stories and three one-act plays here. They're paranormal influences that serve mostly to apply the brakes to characters who- -as usual in Taylor's sneaky comedics--do the right thing for the wrong reasons and the wrong for the right. This spooky element has participated in Taylor's fiction from the first, but before now has simply been known as the past. In the best piece here, the title novella, a young Memphis WW II hero, partly amnesiac, returns home to find himself visited by a dying psychic aunt and an old girlfriend--both from Washington, D.C. Both the dying aunt and the girlfriend seem to be on an obscure mission to restore their own honors and rightful places--and the war hero, somewhat of a newly blankened slate, finds himself manipulated without quite ever knowing how. Meanwhile, there are a few classic Taylor-style stories--``At the Art Theatre''; ``In the Waiting Room'' (outside an intensive-care unit); and one very old, very great story, ``An Overwhelming Question,'' that Taylor has redone--but the longish pieces, such as the novella and ``The Witch of Owl Mountain Springs,'' suffer somewhat from repetitiveness and padding. Still, even they often yield familiar pleasures--is there an American male writer more appreciative than Taylor of young women in groups?--and the interesting new subtheme (quite in keeping with the rest of Taylor's work) of amnesia: its healing, inclusive clemency (``...since I do not remember anything, I cannot therefore deny anything''). -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
It is often said that Taylor's stories are like small novels, but few recent novels create a world as engaging or complete as the 88-page title story of this collection. In this work, the lives of a soldier, the young girl he's pursuing, and his great-aunt become creepily entwined until he is shipped overseas for D-Day. Several years later, the soldier is a reluctant war hero living in Memphis when auntie returns home to die with the nearly forgotten sweetheart in tow. Nearly all the 11 stories are set firmly in Taylor territory: genteel Tennesseans in the first half of this century whose digressive yet compelling stories are usually about the poisonous relationships between generations, often parents and their children. By the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Summons to Memphis ( LJ 10/1/86), this collection includes three one-act plays. For most collections.
- Brian Kenney, Brooklyn
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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