I liked this better than Bel Canto. Narrated by John Nickel, manager of Muddies, who just wants to be a good dad to Franklin... ( )

This book is often overlooked, but is really good. I love that Ann Patchett just gives you a slice of the characters' lives. She doesn't bombard you with information about each character because she wants you to draw your own conclusions. Just as John Nickle creates a story of Taft and his children, we, as readers, are asked to do the same. Patchett tells the story, but it's up to the reader to decide motivation. ( )

This was my least favorite of all the Patchett books. If you like her stuff, it is still worth reading, but don't expect too much. ( )

The story of John, a black ex-drummer who runs a bar in Memphis and finds himself increasingly drawn into the lives of his white, seventeen year-old waitress and her brother. The waitress, Fay, confesses herself to be in love with John, and John is certainly intrigued sexually and emotionally by her. Patchett subtly explores John's unease with Fay's youth and race, and for the first half of the book I was intrigued and enthralled with John as a character. But by the halfway point, it seemed as if the story wasn't really getting anywhere and I found it a struggle to finish. The second half deals a bit more with Carl, Fay's brother, and the trouble he finds himself in, and while that story was potentially just as interesting as Fay's, the connection between the two halves seemed not quite well-enough fleshed out. The Taft of the title is Fay and Carl's father, who died a few months before the opening of the novel. We get scenes from Taft's point-of-view from the months prior to his death, but they are imagined by John. That these third-person point-of-view scenes spring from John's imagination and are not actually told from a narrator outside the action of the story is clear in the beginning, but Patchett stops reminding us that that is what's going on eventually, and the result is a bit disjointed. A neat experiment in showing the reader how much Fay and Carl have entered John's consciousness, but somehow it just doesn't sit right in the end. Good writing and compelling to a point, but ultimately somewhat unsatisfying.

When John Nickel, 34-year-old manager of a Memphis bar hires a 17-year-old white waitress, he hardly knows what he is getting into. The story looks at loyalty and relationships in front of a backdrop of race issues in modern times.

The first third or so of this book is pretty much flawless, on its way to one of my top books in a while. But the seemingly unnecessary gimmick of Nickel imagining (or channeling?!) what early life was like for the kids is distracting and doesn’t serve a useful purpose. Either switch between the two viewpoints and really get inside Taft’s head, or make it less detail-rich. It’s just bizarre and slightly creepy as written. The tension builds deliciously, but the resolution is sadly unsatisfying, and smacks of melodramatic YA lit. Maybe Patchett will get back to her roots with her next one, since it seems her first novel (Patron Saint of Liars) is the one I like best. ( )