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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Many years later, Lilly loses her husband Cam, a man she loved deeply, to a brain aneurysm.
- When she goes to Maine to scatter his ashes she discovers that Cam cheated on her with PEACHES and has a son with her!!!!
- At the end of the book Lilly dies. Seriously???
Need I say more? Thanks a lot Anne.
Years ago I read a book by Anne Rivers Siddons called Low Country
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3 comments:
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!
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.
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.
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