The Oracle at Stoneleigh Court: Stories

by Peter Taylor

"Taylor is a master of the short story form....[His] is an extraordinary gift, too often absent in contemporary fiction."
THE BOSTON GLOBE
In eleven lyrical, moving, and eerie tales, and three one-act plays Pulitzer Prize-winning author Peter Taylor lays claim to a level of literary observation and feeling that is unmatched. Whether he is exploring the limitations of family and the ambivalence of identity in "Cousin Aubry," the cruel payments exacted by love forsaken in "The Witch of Owl Mountain Springs," or the strange, possibly supernatural power that love calls into play in the title novella, Peter Taylor proves once again that he is a writer of rare talent who should not be missed.

Genres: Short Stories

320 pages, Paperback

First published February 16, 1993

About the author

Peter Matthew Hillsman Taylor was a U.S. author and writer. Considered to be one of the finest American short story writers, Taylor's fictional milieu is the urban South. His characters, usually middle or upper class people, often are living in a time of change and struggle to discover and define their roles in society.
Peter Taylor also wrote three novels, including A Summons to Memphis in 1986, for which he won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and In the Tennessee Country in 1994. His collection The Old Forest and Other Stories (1985) won the PEN/Faulkner Award. Taylor taught literature and writing at Kenyon and the University of Virginia.

Reviews

[Sissy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Since this is a collection of short stories I will review each story on its own as I make my way through the book. The first story: Oracle at Stoneleigh Court.
The author uses an incredibly formal language and structure in his tale. The plot of the first follows a young male conscientious objector from the war (WWII) only to get drafted immediately. At a dance he spies a captivating dame. He takes a furlough in DC to spend time with said dame, Lila, that he is enchanted with.
Then he takes her to see his old, gypsy self-styled aunt who lives in a Habersham-like luxury apartment that is cluttered with glories of old. She hypnotizes, she sees essential natures, she reads cards but there is no beneath the surface. The story is never from her point of view, her motives are entirely unclear. I was engaged and interested in what happened with the story, but felt the intriguing parts were left all too unclear. He continues to visit his Aunt, continues to woo Lila and realizes all the while that his Aunt and Lila have become regular friends without him and out of sight. Then his aunt tells him he is not to be married until after the way and that Lila isn't interested in a man like him but only social and economical ladder climbing. At first this seems like a matronly move on his Aunt's part to spare him heartache, but the second half of this tale involves that occurs long after the war is over and our male protaganist is a war hero home. From the moment they disembark on the train, I your dear reader, am lost. The story then becomes of his dual life which he finally chooses the sweetheart Ruthie Ann who he had before Lila arrived with his Aunt and broke the peace. Lila crashes the car, describes feeling shocked, is told her beau is marrying another and faints. Leaves with no trace and the aunt is dead. We are told by a huge Nurse that Lila was under the spell of the Aunt but without any follow up it left the most interesting parts of the story unexplored and unplumbed. While leaving the reader behind with a boring vet and his boring bride.

[Matt Simmons · Rating 5 out of 5]

We always say that we need to know our past to make sense of our present, to learn from our past. Here, in a collection representative of his later output as a whole, Taylor turns that notion upside-down. We find ourselves in a confused, conflicted, disorienting world, the late 20th century. From this vantage point, Taylor's characters, mostly Southerners, look backward, not with nostalgia, but to make sense of it, using the lessons of their confused, conflicted, disorienting present; such is the basic pattern of these stories. Beautiful, lyrical, romantic, and even sensual (in a restrained, disarmingly sober way), these are absolute gems of storytelling. As death hangs around them all, each story has its own power and purpose, but on the whole, they work together as a coherent reflection on the transience of life, and the fickle-yet-gorgeous role of society and place in experiencing, creating, and explicating that transience.

[Dee Dunckley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good writer, will read him again.

[Chrissie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The older I get, the more I like short stories.