What a thoughtful, understated, subtle jewel of a book!
The middle-aged narrator of A Summons to Memphis receives a summons home from his two sisters, who are concerned that their recently-widowed 80-year-old father may be considering remarriage. Having seemingly escaped his father to live in New York City, the narrator is drawn back into the family problems and into reminiscences about his childhood and young adulthood as the son of a dynamic and controlling father.
The subtle nature of the novel comes in here: Taylor utilizes dramatic irony, causing the narrator to reveal truths to the reader which are not apparent to him. This is all done with such a masterful skill that it becomes only gradually apparent to the reader.
What Taylor is examining here are the ambivalent feelings all of us have toward our parents. Do we forget real or imagined offenses? If we can't forget, do we forgive? Do we make excuses for the misdeeds in our minds? Or do we sometimes, perhaps subconsciously, seek revenge? Do our childhood experiences determine the course of the rest of our lives?
This novel is short, but it contains much more food for thought than the much longer family books of Jonathan Franzen. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1987. Highly recommended.
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