Tag Archives: Peter Taylor

It’s been quite an experience reading this anthology.  I’ve learned so much in watching Peter Taylor skillfully focus and bring out the innermost personality of his characters while weaving a setting that grounds the players together in an American South … Continue reading → Continue reading →

This story perhaps more than any other illustrates Taylor’s method of characterization through character observation.  There is, as a matter of fact, very much "overhearing" thus giving us what may (if we assume narrator reliability, and that’s been a major … Continue reading → Continue reading →

The majority of Taylor’s stories in this anthology are set in the old South of Tennessee and therefore there is the constant of social status as well as the racial relations.  Taylor’s amazing insight coupled with his skill at exposing … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I’ve been trying to put my finger on how Peter Taylor manages the deep character revelation he does while in such a subtle way, particularly by using the narrator voice to establish something often quite different than what the narrator … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I believe this story is the first in the anthology to be written in third person pov, but Taylor’s method of indepth character revelation is just as powerful. The protagonist is a middle-aged woman, Harriet, with a grown son and … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Just read this in this Taylor short story: Now the sight of Son and Ann in this pretty frame only reminded her of their unnatural and strange relationship.  They were walking far apart and Ann was speaking with deliberation and … Continue reading → Continue reading →

This was good.  A young boy as first person narrator describes his rather spoiled life with his older sister, widowed father, and housekeeper as he and his sister manipulate the adults.  He is aware of his own flaws and in … Continue reading → Continue reading →

This story in the anthology was not particularly a favorite, although I suspect that the subtlety of characterization is outstanding.  Again, first person pov, the narrator being a young serviceman visiting an old aunt who has been kept out of … Continue reading → Continue reading →

The next story in this collection is A Friend and Protector and while Taylor’s skill still shines in the area of character development and subtlety, this particular story didn’t wow me quite to the state that a couple of the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

The story is simple: A well-to-do man brings an old black man home to live in a room in the barn loft, where his butler and maid, a young black married couple already occupy two rooms and the only bathroom … Continue reading → Continue reading →