Sunday, August 3, 2008

I Hate You Anne Rivers Siddons

Years ago I read a book by Anne Rivers Siddons called Low Country that I really enjoyed. Somehow that lulled me into thinking that I might enjoy other books by Ms. Siddons. Boy was I wrong. I just finished Off Season and I feel like I just got bashed over the head. Off Season now ties with Dream When You're Feeling Blue by Elizabeth Berg as the most depressing book that I have ever read. Here's your spoiler warning. Stop reading now if you don't want to know what happens because all these spoilers are central to why I hated this book.

  1. The main character Lilly loses her first childhood love, Jon at the age of 12. He drowns as the result of cruel words uttered by a hideous girl child called Peaches.
  2. Lilly tragically loses her mother to breast cancer and to cope with these two deaths walls herself off from the world and becomes a hermit with her grief stricken father who is unable to cope.
  3. Many years later, Lilly loses her husband Cam, a man she loved deeply, to a brain aneurysm.
  4. When she goes to Maine to scatter his ashes she discovers that Cam cheated on her with PEACHES and has a son with her!!!!
  5. At the end of the book Lilly dies. Seriously???
Need I say more? Thanks a lot Anne.

3 comments:

Kathi said...

Thank YOU! I have LOVED Ms. Siddons for years: Fault Lines, Up Island, Islands...this woman writes beautifully. Yes, the content of the new book was depressing, but still so well written...but the ENDING. I wanted to kill her! It was midnight when I finished the book and I almost called my sister, another Siddons fan. We had to go back and re-read to make sure we didn't miss anything.

I'm glad to have found your blog. I need some NEW AUTHORS to read. My loves are Siddons and Pat Conroy. I will look around on your blog for recommendations!

Glad I'm not the only one who thought the ending sucked!

Shanna Vaughn said...

Glad to know someone else didn't like it too. I checked Amazon and it looked like it was getting some negative comments over there as well.

Eventer said...

I could not agree with you more. I loved Off Season until the end. The last 2 chapters just did not make sense. When I got finished all I could say was WTF? It made no sense. It seemed so totally out of character for Lilly and Cam both. It almost seemed like the ending belonged to a different book.