A Summons to Memphis

By Peter Taylor

Knopf; 209 pages; $15.95.

AS ANY REVIEWER of books knows, criticism comes easy. When highlighting a book's "major flaws," he need only be witty, clever, slightly sarcastic, and he has done his job. Moreover, he knows that he will have pleased his audience. Almost anyone enjoys reading a well-worded negative review; the piece entertains for awhile, but makes no further claims. The busy and relieved reader feels no obligation to waste time with the book.

A positive review, on the other hand, challenges both critic and reader. The reviewer wants to relay the book's "not-to-be-missed" quality, without quoting endlessly. If he succeeds, the reader will struggle to find time for the book between work, meetings, socializing...or lectures, studying, and midterms.

PETER TAYLOR, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1985, has written a novel to make critics feel their tremendous responsibility. How can the reviewer force his reader to understand that A Summons to Memphis, this sharply perceptive, humorous novel of only 200 pages, should be read at once? How can he demand, "Just stop what you're doing right now and read this book," without seeming either blunt or irrelevant?

So the reviewer resorts to a list of persuasive reasons in order to convince. For those who read to escape a stifling environment, A Summons to Memphis explores the modern cities of Nashville and Memphis from the perspective of a relocated Tennessean in Manhattan. Taylor creates a dynamic representation of Southern society, a world that holds surprises and revelations even for a reader who grew up in such a climate.

The book's Southern veneer, however, does not make it parochial. All the peculiar colloquial mannerisms reinforce an imaginative sense of Americana that makes no one a stranger to the world of this novel. Taylor's portrait of Memphis conveys the duality of life, desultory and crazy at alternate moments.

Readers who insist that a book teach them something of momentous importance will find this novel more than adequate. The quirks and unexpected twists of life are examined with care that exposes layer upon layer of meaning. Loving family relationships, studied unsparingly, pulse with hidden resentments. Social conventions--"exchanging commonplaces and untruths"--are scrutinized to reveal the complexity beneath cool facades. Courtship, marriage, remarriage, cohabitation, bachelorhood and spinsterhood--all achieve an encompassing inventive dimension.

Finally, for the pressured reader in search of humor, A Summons to Memphis provides it. The comedy is situational, two spinster sisters preventing their octagenerian father from remarrying; descriptive, this same eccentric duo frequenting nightclubs, dressed in sequined, clingy, front-and-back plunging fashions; and double-edged, undercut by a gently cynical realism. The comic sensibility is particular to Taylor's novel, but the truths revealed are universal.

In short, stop what you're doing right now, and read this book.