A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor

Throughout his life, my beloved Uncle Warren reflected on the factors and events that contributed to the choices he made. And with each passing year, his understanding of those choices expanded in scope and depth. Reading this 1987 Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Peter Taylor reminded me of my uncle Warren who passed away in 2012.   

Phillip Carver is forty-nine years old and lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with his much younger girlfriend, Holly Kaplan.  It is the early 1970’s. Phillip’s two older unmarried sisters, Betsy and Jo, have summoned him back to Memphis (the town of his adolescence) to dissuade their 80-year-old father, George Carver, from remarrying.

By today’s standards, not much happens when Phillip return to Memphis. There is no murder or mayhem, no adultery, no affairs. His sisters have simply scared away their father’s octogenarian bride. There will be no wedding. But, the trip is dramatic because Phillip begins to acquire a new perspective on the family dynamics that resulted in so many incidents of passive aggressive rage. Beneath the saccharin show of Southern manners, George Carver’s four grown children and deceased wife have suffered under George’s single-minded narcissism. 

Phillip’s older brother volunteered and died in WWII. And neither Phillip nor his sisters have married or had children. When each of the three surviving siblings falls in love, their father intervenes to stop them from marrying.  It is after Phillip receives his summons to Memphis that he understands the actions his father took to sabotage Phillip’s love affair when Phillip was in his early twenties. It is as if a bank of fog blocked Phillip’s view of what transpired and Phillip never wanted to see what was on the other side.

After the initial summons, Phillip Carver returns to Memphis for another visit. He says, “I was discovering that all I cared about now was how I had been treated by my family in the long-ago affair of Clara Prince.” And yet, even as Phillip puts the pieces together of his father’s sabotage, he resolves, “Forgetting the injustices and seeming injustices which one suffered from one’s parents during childhood and youth must be the major part of any maturing process."

Phillip Carver has not forgotten the injustices of his youth, but he arrives at a clearer understanding of the dysfunction of his family and how the rigid Southern social structures reinforced the oppression he and his siblings experienced. Unfortunately, Phillip’s two sisters never forgive their father even as their lives continue to revolve around him. As he ages, they love him while simultaneously seeking revenge, all the while their emotional growth is stunted and they are unable to mature. Phillip escapes, but his sisters are trapped in a world of convivial conversations and inauthentic relationships.

At its core, A Summons to Memphis is Phillip Carver’s understated and methodical reflection on the factors that shaped and stalled his life. With the evolved understanding he acquires by the end of the novel, I hope he is able to live his last thirty years without the ghosts of Memphis tormenting him.