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Summary: A reader from Ohio
Review: I read this book three years ago, but Lucy Bondurant still creeps into my thoughts at times. Great character development. I absolutely loved this book.
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Summary: Too detailed and the ending left me stumped.
Review: I really would like to know what happened at the end. Did Shepp jump into the river, or did he run into Sarah's arms? The ending, as mentioned above, has me stumped. I know it is one of her earlier works - it's just too wordy. I've loved other books that she has written. This is the first one that I cannot figure out. If anyone can help, please contact me. Thank you.
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Summary: It was a family reunion for me, I cried my heart out.
Review: I was captured from the first line and could not put it down. I was so shocked by the last line that I cried. I was warmed and chilled throughout. I have not been this moved by an author since Pat Conroy. What brilliance. How could this woman have been educated where I was.
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Summary: Siddons' Tour de Force
Review: I was so enchanted with this world: I suppose I'm a sucker for the upper classes, but even as I drooled over the lifestyle of the Buckhead Pinks and Gels, I could see the fear, sadness, tragedy, triumph all classes experience. I just enjoyed every description, every event, every person, and how how the story revolves around choices and consequences. I especially appreciated Siddons'effort to meaningfully portray mental illness, dysfunctional families, and love undone by selfishness. The treatment wasn't formula, characters and events often made you scratch your head, and that's the joy, to be surprised and tested by these people. Just a dynamite piece, this is something on which an author can rest her laurels.
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Summary: Not my favorite Anne Rivers Siddons book
Review: I've thoroughly enjoyed quite a few of Siddons' books but this one didn't absorb me the way some of the others had. The 800+ pages could have easily been edited to about 500 and been a more compelling read. I found myself scanning over pages of repetitive narrative. I was, however, fascinated by seeing the change in culture throughout the "golden age" of this little hamlet. I was never able to feel much sympathy for the self-centered and destructive Lucy Bondurant and was often disgusted with the weak-willed main character, Shep Bondurant who allowed her to destroy his life. It was hard to believe that all the woes of Lucy Bondurant were due to "the south" rather than her own self-destructive impulses and mental illness.
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Summary: Don't Blame The South For The Likes of Lucy Bondurant!
Review: If, as Anne Rivers Siddons insinuates in the opening lines of this novel, the South killed Lucy Bondurant, then no one need ever take responsibility for their bizarre actions and dysfunctional behavior. Just blame it on your hometown. Hogwash, Ms. Siddons! You have given us much better than this cop-out.Lucy and her mother, brother, and sister are seemingly abandoned by Lucy's father and this fact haunts her for her entire life as she searches for a father figure everywhere. When her family takes up residence with wealthy relatives, she forms a bond of love and hate with her cousin Shep. The fact that she ruins his life while destroying every chance at happiness he ever has, the fact that she is amoral, self-centered, and totally without real love for anyone cannot be blamed so easily on the fact that Atlanta emerged from a sleepy Southern hamlet to become one of the country's greatest metropolitan areas. There were too many other abandoned children (and worse) who turned into fine, upstanding adults in spite of early misfortunes. In addition to Lucy being totally unlikeable as a heroine, it was the narrator Shep who made me sick with his pushover personality. He enables Lucy every page of the novel and, amazingly, never sees her for the troublesome, demented woman she becomes. Poor Shep the doormat. Despite two highly unlikeable characters taking center stage in this novel, the story might be interesting since it is set in a pivotal time-frame of American history and one which today's aging baby boomers are very familiar with---Camelot, the assassination of JFK, the Civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King's dream, etc. However, it slogs painfully along for about 400 pages before things really begin to happen. Where were the editors on this one? As I moved into the final 200 of 800+ pages, I began to think that maybe this was a pretty good book after all. That's before the author knocked the wind out of me by ending with such ambiguity that I'm not sure what really happened. So now I am desperately searching for friends, enemies, anyone who read this book and begging them to enlighten me as to what *really* happened in the last two paragraphs.
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Summary: "Get over it!"
Review: It's a compelling read, I'll grant you that. I'll even give Siddons the benefit of the doubt in terms of her impenetrable, twining prose, with its repetitions and endless subordinate clauses -- if it's an intentional metaphor for the suffocating Southern setting. (If it's not intentional, then she needed a better editor). But she fails utterly in projecting her protagonist, Lucy, as a sympathetic character. We never see this woman as the "essential flame" (Siddons' nauseating adjective, used incessantly") or the enchantment she supposedly casts. In her actions and words, she's amoral, selfish, egotistical, endlessly destructive. Siddons has forgotten a cardinal rule of characterization here. And Lucy's motivation is equally weak. Before I was halfway through the book, I was sick of the premise that her father's desertion and "the South" had wrecked Lucy and made her what she was. All I could think of was, "Get over it!" Her death is supposed to be a tragic symbolic of what the South does to it women. The reaction it engendered in me was relief that she'd finally been killed off!
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Summary: "Get over it!"
Review: It's a compelling read, I'll grant you that. I'll even give Siddons the benefit of the doubt in terms of her impenetrable, twining prose, with its repetitions and endless subordinate clauses -- if it's an intentional metaphor for the suffocating Southern setting. (If it's not intentional, then she needed a better editor). But she fails utterly in projecting her protagonist, Lucy, as a sympathetic character. We never see this woman as the "essential flame" (Siddons' nauseating adjective, used incessantly") or the enchantment she supposedly casts. In her actions and words, she's amoral, selfish, egotistical, endlessly destructive. Siddons has forgotten a cardinal rule of characterization here. And Lucy's motivation is equally weak. Before I was halfway through the book, I was sick of the premise that her father's desertion and "the South" had wrecked Lucy and made her what she was. All I could think of was, "Get over it!" Her death is supposed to be a tragic symbolic of what the South does to it women. The reaction it engendered in me was relief that she'd finally been killed off!
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Summary: Southern fiction at its best.
Review: Like only this author can be. Lucy and Shep Bondurant are cousins that are clearly headed on a path to destruction from the opening chapter of this book. When Lucy comes to live in the Atlanta house with Gibbs's family she takes his heart and breath away. From this meeting of two lonely children a strong lifelong bond grows, one that will go beyond words and even death. Siddons writes with a style of her own, beautiful, rambling, expressive prose that leaves you feeling the heat and charm of Atlanta and it's nobility. Her characters are not always likable but they are intensely human, making them more than just cardboard cut heroes and heroines. I enjoy the incredible way this author puts the reader in the scene. I have enjoyed several of this authors book's. My favorite, and the jewel in her crown, as my friend Rachel once put it, is COLONY a book that will warm your heart for years to come. Kelsana 5/26/02
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Summary: It's a Southern Thing
Review: Peachtree Road is like an extremely tall ice tea on a blistering southern day. It is long, and drawn out at times, but so cool and refreshing. If you do not like descriptive narrative this book may not work for you. Personally, I think that it it exemplifies the southern tradition of storytelling. Life down there is (was) a bit slower and everyone takes their time with things. Yes, it did take a while to hook into the story, but having read Siddons before I knew that her characters are so vivid that it would be worth it. I found the lonliness of Shep very disturbing and ultimately got a bit fed up with Lucy. Still, I can almost hear her voice as she calls him on the phone. Being an optimist, I like to think that he did find some peace with Sarah. I loved the ending of the book and I think that Siddons achieved a monumentous task. If you enjoy a deep emotional read than this book will deliver.
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