Rating  - Another Minor Miracle from Ann Patchett
In a book that is set far away in place, character, and circumstance from her justly celebrated novel "Bel Canto," Patchett has crafted a story that reveals once again that the extraordinary lies just beneath the surface in even the most "ordinary" of people. Nickel, the black manager of a Memphis bar and a former jazz musician struggling with his own losses, hires Fay, a white teenage girl, as a waitress. Against his better judgment he becomes increasingly involved in her life and that of her younger brother Carl, a troubled kid who spells trouble for Nickel. As the characters try to make sense of their own circumstances and find a way to move forward with their lives, dangerous collisions become inevitable and choices must be made. Hovering over everything is Taft, the dead father of Fay and Carl, whose life and experience could not be more different than that of Nickel, and who haunts both Nickel's and the reader's thoughts. The book is well-plotted, with enough suspense to keep the reader turning the pages, as Ms. Patchett performs her own magic, showing us that nothing, and no one, is simple.
Rating - Disarming simplicity
One characteristic of Ann Patchett's work is her simplicity. All her works concentrate on the emotional interrelationships of a small group of people, often in an enclosed community and/or over a short space of time. This is seen most clearly in her masterpiece BEL CANTO, but TAFT also displays a similarly beguiling compression. There are scarcely a dozen character, and the whole action takes place within a few miles of the small Memphis bar managed by the narrator-hero John Nickel. In fact, very little actually happens until the very end, though the emotional turmoil of affections and loyalties is quite intense. What some other readers saw as a weakness, I treasure as one of the book's greatest strengths.
Nickel, a former blues musician turned bar manager, yearns for his son whom his estranged lover, the child's mother, has taken out of state. In some kind of emotional compensation, he finds himself involved in the lives of a fatherless young waitress who comes to work in his bar and her younger brother. Nickel is not a wholly admirable character, though he strives to do the right thing. Patchett has caught especially well the manner in which emotional trauma can ricochet until a person no longer knows his true feelings or even his own best interest. Looking at her innocent girl-next-door face on her publicity photo, it is hard to imagine that she has been there, felt that, but this book must surely have been born out of experience.
Presumably outside her experience, though, is the specific life of her African-American narrator, John Nickel. I was greatly impressed by her daring in writing about such a world from the inside, but I have to admit that some of the language seems borrowed from hard-boiled fiction rather from life, and I cannot judge whether she captures the particular world of the blues musician. I felt very confident, though, in her description of the work of the bar. And, where it really matters, in the workings of the human heart, Patchett is admirably color-blind and has close to perfect pitch.
The most unusual technical aspect of this book, which gives it its title, is Nickel's imagined reconstructions of the relation between the two young people and their dead father, Taft. These episodes become increasingly detailed as the book goes on, and form a parallel strand in the narrative, almost as though Nickel were there himself, engaging in a form of time-traveling. It is clear that Nickel comes to identify with his imagined Taft, whom he uses as a sort of touchstone of fatherhood. Some readers may have been puzzled by this, but I liked it for its ability to reflect on the soul of the central character (Nickel, not Taft, who in a real sense does not exist). All Patchett's novels, with the partial exception of her first, seem to require some kind of artifice to bring out the feelings of her characters in their purest form. In TAFT, this artifice is perhaps too obvious, a mere authorial device. In THE MAGICIAN'S ASSISTANT, she uses literal but fantastic magic tricks for the same purpose, but the device is more seamlessly incorportated into the fabric of the novel. Surely one of the great reasons for her success with BEL CANTO is her ability to parlay a real-life event (the capture of a South American embassy by terrorists) into an almost magical suspension of time.
But the real value of TAFT is its pay-off. The beauty of its ending--not too neat but deeply satisfying--kept me awake for most of the night after I finished it. The mainly internal action of the book culminates in a climactic event which at last reminds Nickel of his true priorities. In the last two chapters, Patchett's handling of the strand of magic reconstruction is particularly impressive, finally linking the two characters of Taft and Nickel, and bringing about another of those gentle miracles that one has come to associate with her work.
Rating  - A beautiful voice, but the story doesn't gel
I was completely mezmorized by the first quarter of the book. Even though Anne Patchett is writing as a white woman, her characterizations of John, the black male ex-drummer and bar manager, and of the other bar employees ring true. The little details in the relationships between the characters, their idiosynchrocies and habits, are intriguing. The theme of loyalty and love surrounding John's longing for his son is equally compelling. BUT - when we get to the heart of the story, where John is pulled into alove-lust relationship with Fay, my stomach had a sinking "oh-no" feeling. And this instant reaction was correct. This plot line was flat and unbelievable, even repellant. So, too, are issues with Carl, Fay's drug-dealing brother. Anne Patchett is an incredibly talented author. I highly enourage you to read Bel Canto or The Magician's Assistnat instead.
Rating  - Patchett's weakest novel is still a good read
It's true that Taft is not Ann Patchett's strongest work - and even she's admitted that Taft is not the best title for a book. However, it speaks well for her that Taft is still a good read. It's a story primarily of fatherhood and loyalty - however misplaced. I've read all but one of Patchett's books, starting with the non-fiction Truth and Beauty, and think that Patchett is one of the best novelists writing today. Patchett has a gift for language and is poetic without being thick. She also knows how to weave a story and her characters, even those that aren't as well fleshed out, stay with you long after you've read the last page. If you've never read a book by Patchett, Bel Canto and The Magician's Assistant are better than Taft, but if you've read her other works and want an engaging page turner that's far better than average, Taft is a worthy read. In fact, even if a reader started with Taft, they'd get a good enough taste of Patchett's talents that they'd seek out her other works and be even more impressed with whatever Patchett book found its way into their hands next.
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