Reviews - Taft: A Novel | The StoryGraph

170 reviews for:

Taft: A Novel

Ann Patchett

3.46 AVERAGE

jrangel1's review against another edition

4.5

reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

schray32's review against another edition

4.0

Great audio. Ann Patchett always amazes me on how different each of her books are.

graywacke's review against another edition

3.0

reflective medium-paced

This book has some strikes against it. White author writing in the voice of a black narrator took me some adjustment. And it has none of Patchett's strengths of character and moment experience. A novel of Beale Street in Memphis, John Nickel, who misses his young son, living in Miami with the boy's mother, managers a bar on Beale Street, and gets involved with some older teens who are struggling and going a little too crazy after their father died, and they were forced to move from the east Tennessee mountains to their aunt and uncles house in Memphis.

It's actually enjoyable. But nothing special. For Patchett completists only.

bibliobiophile's review against another edition

4.0

I just love Patchett's style. The story wasn't really one to change your life or make you think or make you stay up all night, but it was beautiful. The characters felt like people who were real, trying to figure out how to be a parent or a lover or a friend when life gets messy. It was exactly the kind of story that I enjoyed reading before going to bed at night.

biobibliophile's review against another edition

4.0

lindseysparks's review against another edition

3.0

I liked this, but at times it felt a little like an exercise from the Iowa Writer's Workshop rather than a fully formed novel, especially since it ends midsentence (or there was something wrong with my copy)!!!! It felt like maybe the assignment was to write from the perspective of someone who was a different gender and/or race and she went and made it a book. I have mixed feelings about that. Writers can write what they want, but at the same time it just felt strange. I enjoyed it and never wanted to stop reading, but I don't get it. Why the daydreams? about Taft? Why is it called Taft? Because he's putting himself in Taft's place as Fay's father? That just seemed odd. Patchett can write though, that's for sure.