Nora, Nora: A Novel - Hardcover

Siddons, Anne Rivers

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 006017613X ISBN 13: 9780060176136

Publisher: Harper, 2000

Synopsis

“A treat to be savored.”

—Houston Chronicle

 

A classic from New York Times bestselling author Anne Rivers Siddons, Nora, Nora tells the story of free-thinking Cousin Nora Findlay who turns tiny Lytton, Georgia, on its ear in the summer of 1961. Pat Conroy (The Prince of Tides) says the author of Low Country, Up Island, Peachtree Street, and King’s Oak “ranks among the best of us,” and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution praises Nora, Nora as “Anne Rivers Siddons writing at the top of her form. This lively, sparkling coming-of-age novel is superbly written and wholly engaging.”

About this title

About the Author

Anne Rivers Siddons's bestselling novels include Nora, Nora; Sweetwater Creek; Islands; and Fox's Earth. She is also the author of the nonfiction work John Chancellor Makes Me Cry. She and her husband divide their time between Charleston, South Carolina, and Brooklin, Maine.

From the Back Cover

I set this story back in my own dreaming, small-town South, in my own time, 1961: that suspended time swung between two epochs that shaped America for good and all. I think I chose it because that turbulent transition was the greatest epiphany of my life, a crossing from the sweet, insular world I knew to another one, volatile and frightening and yet entirely necessary and right.

--Anne Rivers Siddons

Peyton is not ready to share her widowed father with anyone, let alone a barely remembered cousin who just rolled into town, a cousin who smokes cigarettes and drives a pink Thunderbird. However, her father seems to like Nora well enough, and she does make for good conversation at the Losers Club, and prim Aunt Augusta hates her, which raises Nora slightly in Peyton's esteem. Maybe she isn't so bad -- maybe Nora is just what quiet Lytton, Georgia, needs this summer.

The whole household is revitalized by Nora's energy, and when she takes a job teaching the first integrated honors class at the local high school, it looks as if she might stay on forever. But soon it becomes clear that something is troubling Nora deeply. Peyton believes that whatever it is, it must be more than the snide comments made by neighbors who don't like her "unsouthern" ways. Nora always laughs that off. It has to be something from her past that's bothering her, something she is running away from. When the shocking truth comes to light, it stuns the residents of their small segregated town. It also teaches Peyton the enormous cost of loving -- and the necessity of doing it anyway.

Reviews

Siddons pulls off another smoothly written novel with ingratiating ease, despite an unpromising beginning. Readers may fear they're in the realm of the hackneyed reflections of To Kill a Mockingbird and A Member of the Wedding when they're introduced to 12-year-old, "thin, frail, queer and nervous" Peyton McKenzie. In the seventh grade in Lytton, Ga., Peyton has "no friends of her own age and gender," and spends her free time in the parsonage tool shed with 34-year-old Ernie Longworth, eccentric, erudite sexton and grave keeper of the Methodist church. The third member of their Losers Club is eight-year-old Boot, the handicapped grandson of Chloe, the McKenzies' black housekeeper. Peyton considers herself the consummate "loser" because her mother died the day after she was born, and her cool, distant father seems to hold Peyton responsible. When a beautiful red-haired stranger blows into town in a Thunderbird coup?, this too seems tritely familiar. Outspoken Nora Findlay, a distant cousin who smokes, drinks and doesn't wear a bra, is clearly out to shock the morally conservative community. Though Siddons doesn't deliver any thematic surprises in this well-worn genre, she does offer a neatly competent and engrossing story that captures the reader's sympathies despite its quality of d?j? vu, as she conjures up the social and racial attitudes of a small Southern town in the 1960s. Nora enthralls an initially reluctant Peyton, working magic on the girl's appearance, self-confidence, intellectual curiosity and moral vision, even as she scandalizes everyone else in town. But daredevil Nora is secretly vulnerable, as Peyton learns when her cousin confesses the heavy emotional burden she carries. Eventually, both Nora and Peyton experience the anguish of betrayal. In addition to her impeccable re-creation of Southern speech and atmosphere, Siddons captures the angst of adolescence with practiced skill, and she handles the rising drama of her plot so smoothly that the book has all the marks of bestsellerdom. Agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh at the Writers Shop. 250,000 first printing; author tour. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Siddons!s (Low Country) latest is in part a loving tribute to Harper Lee!s To Kill a Mockingbird. Not only do similarities run through its characters, setting, and theme, but her story features a guest appearance by the classic novel when it is debated in her high school classroom. In 1961, Nora, an outrageous, exotic, outspoken woman who smokes cigarettes and drives a pink Thunderbird, arrives in the sleepy, segregated town of Lytton, GA. While some residents are ruffled by her unsouthern behavior, the effect Nora has on her adolescent and impressionable cousin Peyton is electric, opening Peyton!s senses to the world around her. Nora frees her cousin by correcting a devastating misunderstanding that has ruled Peyton!s life (that she was responsible for her own mother!s death). But Nora herself is dogged by a dark secret, and in the end she self-destructs, her own poor choices wrecking her future in Lytton. Siddons!s prose is so fluid, graceful, and lovely, that after diving in, the reader is carried along effortlessly and with great pleasure. A completely satisfying and nourishing read, containing both style and substance.
-"Carol J. Bissett, New Braunfels P.L., TX
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 006017613X
• ISBN 13: 9780060176136
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272