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Summary: Heartache and humor in the Deep South circa 1961!
Review: I am a huge ARS fan!! Some of her books are just plain "bad", but others are wonderful!! This is one!! The tried and true image of the "little lost soul" ie, Peyton, is quickly replaced by the strange, exotic, questionable character of Nora!! Nora breathes fresh air into Peyton's lonely life in small town GA circa 1961. Siddons' writing seems to capture the scene, the town, the era so beautifully!! I don't think she's ever written quite so discriptively!! And for those of you NOT from the South, she captures the true feeling of what it was like growing up in a small Southern town in the early '60's.As for Nora, Siddons has captured the true "free spirit" that people were afraid of, were in "awe" of, secretly admired, and generally distrusted!! She is not the "true lady of the South" by a long shot!! I found this really refreshing!!! And I know a "Nora" in my small Southern town upbringing!! I'm sure there were many more!!! A little different from the usual ARS, but well worth the read!!
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Summary: Sorry to see it end!
Review: I listened to this book on audio and loved every minute of it. I have read a couple of Siddon's novels before this, and this was definitely my favorite. The story centers around Peyton, a 12 year old girl being raised by her father after her mother died shortly after giving birth to her. All her life, Peyton had believed that she had killed her mother and that's why her father wasn't very loving towards her. I felt so sorry for Peyton when her Aunt Augusta took her to Atlanta to get her hair fixed and new clothes. She came out of the beauty shop with a huge perm and clothes she hated and went home and cried. Fortunately, along comes cousin Nora who manages to create a cute hairdo out of the perm and begins to bring Peyton out of her shell. The people in the town either love Nora or hate her, and her views on racism cause alot of commotion, but I couldn't help but love her character. Of course, I rooted for Nora and Peyton's dad to fall in love and have a happy ending, but the author throws in a few twists and the story doesn't always go the way I'd hoped, but I enjoyed the whole book and will recommend it to all my friends. I can't wait until the next Anne Rivers Siddons novel.
Rating: 
Summary: A Useful Read
Review: In Anne Rivers Siddons' book Nora, Nora, she captures the emotions of a 12 year old girl and unleashes them in a still racially-drawn South during the heat and turmoil of 1961. She sends a distant relative to relieve this girl of her pent-up preteen angst and of her father's sheltered life and changes it into something to talk about. Again Siddons has proven herself worthy of throwing herself into a life other than her own and turning it into something happy. With her colourful depiction and mysterious twist, Nora, Nora is a useful read that will soften hearts and bring a couple of laughs along the way.
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Summary: The gift of a constant heart ... the best summer read so far
Review: Peyton McKenzie believes she killed her mother....and that belief colors all she does in the small southern town that is her home. The adults in her life look upon her with a mix of bemusement and worry, but let her run. Her closest friends are the two fellow mwmbers of the Losers' Club, and they aren't going to encourage her to change. Out of the blue, Nora arrives. Nora is Peyton's older cousin, a child of the sixties and the south. Nora enthralls Petyon, and begins to raise havoc in town. She is breath of fresh air and life....and is the guiding hand as Peyton takes her first steps into young womanhood. There have been conplaints that the book is superficial, I found it to be engrossing. Following familiar themes from ARS other books, the class struggles in the small town, race, loss and breaking away from conformitity. I liked this so much because it delt with flawed humans, no simple black and white. In the end it is a story about "having been born with a constant heart" and learning to accept those who love us.
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Summary: Hallmark Presents
Review: Anne Rivers Siddons' most recent novel could better have been titled Peyton, Peyton. Although Nora is the catalyst for much of the action in this short novel, this is truly a coming-of-age story about a young girl,Peyton, growing into self-awareness and real life. As I progressed in the novel, I couldn't help but visualize sitting in front of the TV, watching this on the Hallmark Show. Can't you just see the beautiful Nora, in her pink convertible coming into the small town and turning everything and everybody into a tizzy? This is a fun,easy read but not Siddons best. It seemed to me that she was in a hurry to turn out another book, and didn't take the time to fully develop the characters. When she does, as in Up Island, she is magnificent!
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Summary: Couldn't finish this...
Review: This was my first Anne Rivers' book, and I admit to some disappointment. I loved the book up to the inclusion of the title character: Nora. Then the book turned into a Nora lovefest. Nora is smarter, sexier, more intelligent and more 'politically correct' than the rest of the other bigoted-narrow minded Anglos in the small southern town, feh. The other heroine, Peyton is an ungrateful child, who seems to to spend more time pontificating the doings of adults than any teenager alive. Instead of being grateful for the clothes and makeover her aunt gives her she whines and complains about it even to the point of being physically ill... Peyton was way too old to act like that. Errr. Back to the character of Nora. To put it bluntly: I disliked her. If her anachronistic behavior (were not bad enough), the author uses Nora as her mouthpiece for an unending soapbox commentary of social issues from morality to racial-issues, and she does it with the weight of a leaden hockey puck. (While I DO agree racial issues and civil rights are big and important factors, I did not want to be bludgeoned every time the character opens her mouth). I had to give this up about halfway through the book, the character of Nora just rubbed me completely the wrong way. If you want to read a book with racial issues done right, check out "To Kill a Mockingbird." I found Nora, Nora a disappointment.
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Summary: 5 star book
Review: This book is great. It starts out a little slow in the beginning when we are learning about Peyton. She is young, living with her widower father & a wonderful woman who takes care of them. Then came Nora & the story just takes off. Page after page it just gets better. When I finished the book I kept checking to see if there was more. I didn't want it to end. It is full of surprises. If you want to read a book that totally grips you through the whole book read Nora, Nora. Anne Rivers Siddons is one the the top writers. Everybook she writes it great. Totally looking forward to her next book.
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Summary: Slow Taking Off, But It Gets Better!
Review: The beginning of this book is just a little bit hard to get into as it talks about a spoiled rotten kid who felt she had everything to do with killing her mother.But when Nora arrives, the plot thickens and the story becomes much more entertaining and engrossing from there on. Anne Rivers Siddons has a way of writing with a different style with each book she composes, and this one though written well, is quite differently written then her others.
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Summary: NICE STORY
Review: I found this book was not as good as others that this author has written.....A coming of age story that shows Peyton McKenzie as a shy 7th grader who is very lonesome.... Her mother died when she was born and she feels that she killed her. Peyton has no friends except for Ernie and Boot who are members of her "Loosers Club". Her father is kind to her and loves her, however. he does not spend much time with her. Peyton's prim Aunt Augusta is the one who has the resonsibility of instructing her how to become a proper southern lady with poor results....At this time, colorful, cigarette smoking Nora. Peyton's 3rd cousin. arrives one day in small quiet Lytton, Ga. driving her pink convertible Thunderbird. Nora moves in with the McKenzies and her energy just transforms this household. Peyton loves her cousin and blossoms into a lovely young lady....Nora takes a job teaching a segregated honors English class in high school, but the citizens of this small town do not like Nora's "wild ways". THis being the early sixties they are not willing to have segregation in their schools...Nora carries a deep secret from her past in her heart and she does finally reveal it to Peyton with the understanding that it will remain a secret with her...I think you will find this novel enjoyable and will love the characters.
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Summary: Wish I'd had an aunt like Nora
Review: For most readers of Nora, Nora, the title character will steal the show. A whiff of scandal accompanies Nora's arrival in Lytton, a sleepy, rural Georgia town. She smokes, cusses, and wears a T-shirt that says, "Jesus is coming. Look busy." It's 1961 and Nora wants revolution. She wants it now. She tries to railroad Lytton with change, teaching Tropic of Cancer in a public high school barely ready for To Kill a Mockingbird. Nora's seeming cynicism masks a more fundamental naivete. She believes that if she shows people the new horizons they hunger for, they will guard her secrets. That she is betrayed from almost every side is the novel's central heartbreak. Siddons has written a string of bestsellers, including Low Country and Outer Banks, whose titles reflect their Southern settings. The author's finest achievement in her new book may be with the character Peyton, a 12-year-old girl hovering unwillingly on the brink of adulthood in an era when gender dictated more rigid roles than it does now. Siddons accurately captures the impulse that leads even the best-hearted adults to make children over in their own image. One of the novel's funniest and most painful episodes is Peyton's trip to the beauty parlor, where tomboy Peyton is made over into a southern belle, complete with heavy makeup, under her aunt's iron hand. The next day, Peyton gets transformed, yet again, into the image of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's by her nightclub hopping, feminist cousin Nora. Nora, Nora effectively explores the extent to which people fail to change. The novel's three principle characters are trapped not only in the mores of a small southern town, which the civil rights movement threatens to leave behind, but also in their own individual comfort zones. Even Peyton's likable father, Frazier, a lawyer and advocate of integration, presses only so hard for badly needed reforms to Lytton's school and class systems. Change and transformation don't come as easily to people in real life as they do in the movies, and Siddons shows us that reality.
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