“Memphis” by Tara Stringfellow
“Memphis” by Tara Stringfellow
This is Tara Stringfellow’s debut novel; she is a former attorney and known for published poetry and prose and her love and use of language is displayed throughout the novel. The story follows four strong women over three generations and is based around the family home in Memphis. The author uses her own family history to base the novel on and some of our group felt that this intimate family connection led to a positive bias of the women in the story compared to the men, whose story was not told in any detail. The story has lots going on in it and does have some upsetting content but is also filled with joy and laughter. Stringfellow writes about each of the women in different chapters and the story moves back and forth between different eras; this means that the story jumps around. The majority of our group felt that to enjoy the novel, they had to continually refer back to the family tree to establish which character they were going to read about and what period they were in. The book did split the group’s view of it, with one member rating it extremely highly and a “must read” where others struggled to find a connection to the story. The majority of us enjoyed exploring the characters and following the story through the years.
The average marking of the group was 6