Off Season
by Anne Rivers Siddons
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Book Reviews of Off Season
Book Review: Take-the-breath-away prose
Summary: 5 Stars
Rivers Siddons spins the web of a tale with such remarkable magnetism and gentleness that I'm caught and can't get out long before I realize it and only after I read the last page can I even begin to do that. And in this case only after I re-read the last 7 chapters and the epilogue again. And again. Grasping little whispers of sentences and words and thoughts on the second and third time through that I missed the first, thereby enabling me to, what seemed like FINALLY understand an ending I despised on the first read. While this occurred off-and-on in the read; while this felt a bit over the top in its fantasamagorical, magical sucking up of a normally realistic and pragmatic brain, that never lasted. My brain really did want to go where Rivers Siddons took it, even as it scoffed along the way. This is a chick flick in print, and anybody out there who would like to read along with me, do come and go places we would never otherwise go, in awe of the story's power, and positively delicious in the contemplative fire of its more-than-perfectly-natural hideous yearning to wreak vengeance. Cheers. Kudos. Gold stars. Champagne purses. To the creator of Lilly Constable McCall who is loveable and hilarious and gorgeous beyond anyone I've ever known in real life!Book Review: No Peachtree Road
Summary: 3 Stars
I have long been a fan of Anne Rivers Siddons,with Peachtree Road still being my favorite and what I consider her best work. I found Off Season disconcerting and jerky. Lily and Jon were far too young to have the adult conversations they shared. For Lily, a reclusive, cosseted daughter of old DC society, to rush into the arms of a complete stranger in a Georgetown restaurant and then agree to marry him was ludicrous. There were too many handing threads....what happened to Dr. Constable ? If Elzabeth Comstable had no lymph node involvement following surgery, how could she have so suddenly been in extremis? Cam and Peaches ? A talking cat who waits patiently for someone to come resue him ? Puleeze ! I was enjoying myself in spite of some of the strange happenings and things left unexplained until the end of the book. I had the feeling the author didn't know what to do to wrap the story up, so she just made up some convoluted,unrealistic conclusion. I have read the ending several times to be certain I wasn't missing something. I'm still not sure I have the whole thing sraight, and it is very disconcerting. References to the Jungle Book were right out of Peachtree Road,but that's where any resemblance between a great read and this book end.Book Review: Siddons' Absolute Best
Summary: 5 Stars
Oh how GOOD this book is. Oh how much I enjoyed it! Siddons writes with such ease, such pathos and such truth, that the story, probably done a million times before, appears brand new and full of meaning.
A new widow, Lilly McCall, comes to her family's longtime vacation home in Edgewater, Maine, with her rascally old cat and her husband's urn, to grieve in her own way. Yes, it sounds like a cliche, but believe me when I tell you that I could relate to everything about Lilly--her way of grieving, her fey nature that believes more than slightly in "fairies and folk," her wonderful personality. And I found myself grieving right along with her.
As the story continues, told in Lilly's thoughts that go back and forth between now and her childhood summers in Edgewater, we are immersed in her family, her friends, her pets (there is a dog in the book who is so real I felt I could reach down and pet him)--and her loves. I could smell the sea, I could visualize the rocks and Lilly's beloved ospreys, I could relate to her feelings, I could smell the sea-moldy old blankets in her secret hideaway in the attic.
All told, this is truly a wonderful book, and I am proud to recommend it.
Book Review: I would have rated it a 3 until the last 5 pages - worst ending EVER!
Summary: 1 Stars
I enjoyed reading the book all the way up until the very end, but the ending was horrible. The entire book is built on the development of various relationships between the main character, Lilly, and other people in her life. Most of the relationships are clearly painted and the interactions between the characters helps the reader to bond. Despite the fact that Siddons sets up the relationship between Lilly and her husband as being one of the most critical to the book, she hardly deals with their adult relationship at all. Towards the end the reader just starts to get a glimpse of what their life together was like, but it is a foggy picture. Clues start dropping that there might have been trouble in paradise, but it was all very subtle. Then the book ends quite abruptly and mysteriously opening up new questions without answers and not answering the questions that were already developed. It was like the cliff hanger at the end of a soap opera instead of the satisfying end to a complete novel. Unless there is a sequel I don't know about, I don't recommend this book because of how frustrating it is to leave the reader in the dark after all the effort she spent to get to know these characters.Book Review: Second half was bitterly disappointing
Summary: 1 Stars
Despite errors and some unbelievable plot lines in the first half (witnessing her mother be fondled by an elderly man - but what great luck because he found the mother's breast cancer!) noted in other reviews, I was drawn in by the young Lilly, her family, and especially her 11th summer at Edgewater. However, the second half felt like a betrayal - *spoiler alert* - her father obsessively treating Lilly like his lost wife; the complete absence of her brother (not sure why he was even a character); no insight into her marriage to Cam (ostensibly the other main character per the book's jacket); her daughters ended up just as spoiled as her childhood nemesis; and her best friend has kept secrets about her husband all along; and Cam secretly went to Maine for years without Lilly knowing. I remained hopeful that there could still be a good ending, but instead this book had one of the worst endings I have ever read - the nemesis had a child with Cam who actually appears to be a sweet kid (polar opposite to Lilly & Cam's own daughters) and Lilly dropped dead at Edgewater (where Cam had been secretly visiting to cheat on her) when she discovered the real love of her life's ghost was still there.