Description:
Described by Anne Tyler as "the undisputed master of the short story form," Peter Taylor imbued his stories with a powerful sense of the conflicts between the old rural society and the increasingly urbanized South. Ranging in subject from the story of the exposure of a respected doctor's infidelity by the family's longtime cook to the tale of elderly siblings whose party for young people exposes the town's class divisions, the stories often explore family dynamics within the larger society of the South.
Brief description: Peter Taylor, the author of eight story collections, including The Old Forest and Other Stories (Picador) and three novels, including A Summons to Memphis, which won the Pulitzer Prize, and A Woman of Means (Picador), died in 1994. A Tennessee native, he had lived in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his wife, poet Eleanor Ross Taylor.
Review Quotes:
"He comes as close as an American writer can to rivaling Chekhov." --The New York Times
"[Taylor] writes prose as clear as a fine pane of glass." --Time "No one writing in English can do more with a short story . . . He is a master." --Geoffrey Wolff, Newsweek "[Taylor] has achieved utter mastery in short fiction." --Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World