Downtown

Smoky O'Donnell comes to Atlanta in 1966 to pursue a career as a writer and becomes involved with three different men--aristocrat Bradley Hunt, photographer Lucas Baird, and John Howard, a Black civil rights activist

Her latest novel exhibits Siddons's ( Hill Towns ) strengths and weaknesses in equal measure and may leave her fans underwhelmed, disappointed in her uninspired and often pretentious story line. The background, Atlanta in the heady '60s, is well done, but Siddons's penchant for excessive prose and hokey nostalgia often gets out of hand. Maureen "Stormy" O'Donnell is a naive young woman from a working-class Irish-Catholic family who moves to Atlanta in the mid-'60s to write for a local magazine. (Her ease in getting the job and her overjoyed welcome by her new colleagues is the stuff of fairy tales.) She's romanced by socially prominent, old-money swain Brad Hunt but has conflicting feelings about crusading photojournalist Luke Geary . During the course of the narrative, Stormy tackles Atlanta high society, triumphs over a bigoted lieutenant governor and becomes involved in the civil rights movement--and with one of its charismatic stars, John Howard. All this is rendered with a cloying, wide-eyed enthusiasm that hobbles Siddons's attempts to explore the South's prejudice and racism. Her language, which in past books has sometimes teetered toward the overblown, now positively gushes. Atlanta has "a sliver of Brigadoon through its heart," and Brad is so handsome Stormy "almost laughed aloud." Still, readers may welcome Siddons's attempt to grapple with moral and social issues. 300,000 first printing; $325,000 ad/promo; Literary Guild main selection; first serial to Cosmopolitan; audio rights to Harper Audio; author tour .
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Fresh from a fictional European jaunt in last year's Hill Towns, Siddons returns to the American South to depict a sheltered young woman's first taste of independence in the late 1960s. Raised to be a ``decent Catholic girl,'' 26-year-old Smoky O'Donnell leaves her working-class Savannah home for the bright lights of Atlanta, lured by a job offer from Matt Comfort, the talented and high-spirited editor of Downtown magazine. The newest senior editor easily fits in with ``Comfort's People,'' the magazine's small in-house staff, and relishes the on-the-town group socializing that is part of the job, but she becomes frustrated by Matt's (sexist) insistence on occupying her with mundane tasks. Smoky's break comes when she meets charming and wealthy Brad Hunt, who wants her to conduct his previously scheduled Downtown interview--as their first date. The civil rights movement exists only as background to the sheltered Smoky, and although Brad mentions the race ``problem,'' this thread is taken up by two people who become increasingly important to her: Lucas Geary, an accomplished photographer with an irritating habit of aiming his Leica up women's skirts, and his friend John Howard, who is one of Martin Luther King's ``closest lieutenants.'' Smoky's career progresses as satisfactorily as does her romance with Brad. Yet even before Lucas and art director Tom Gordon head out for a look at the ``youth culture'' across the American landscape, one senses that the heady '60s culture (and Downtown as microcosm) will be shown to contain self-indulgence and other seeds of its own decay. Siddons draws her ensemble cast with confidence and panache. But her treatment of serious subjects like race, abortion, and the sexual revolution is troubled by ambiguity, as if she were playing both sides of these volatile issues. (First serial to Cosmopolitan; Book-of-the-Month Club main selection; $325,000 ad/promo; author tour) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Siddons has had a solid winning streak with her seductive portrayals of plucky southern gals holding their own in alien territory, so she's stayed with a sure thing: Smoky O'Donnell is a pretty, curvaceous shanty Irishwoman straight from the docks of Savannah. Smoky is an anomaly in her small, angry world: a young woman with ambition, talent, and a wide-open mind. It's 1966, and change is in the air, especially in the newly glamorous mecca of Atlanta. Smoky is lucky; she's been invited to join the chummy staff of a hip little city magazine. Blunt, determined, and passionate, she soon finds herself caught between two extremes: the wealthy, Waspish power elite and the volatile civil-rights movement. Siddons devotes a lot of ink to describing the conflicting dynamics of this time and place and often seems overwhelmed by material we sense is close to her heart. In fact, for the first 100 pages or so, she seems to be driving with the brakes on. When she does let loose, she treats us to some irresistible romance as well as an unusual, if cursory, dramatization of the struggle between the Black Panthers and followers of Martin Luther King, Jr. What's intriguing about Siddons is how much she transcends the usual parameters of fluff fiction, both in terms of literary finesse and penetrating intelligence. Although this isn't quite up to the caliber of her last book, Hill Towns , it's still a rewarding and bound-to-be-popular page-turner. Donna Seaman

Echoes of Pat Conroy and Tennessee Williams can be heard in half a dozen apocalyptic scenes, keeping us flipping through the last 200 pages of this hefty chronicle of Atlanta in the Sixties. The narrative is slow to warm up, as protagonist Maureen "Smoky" O'Donnell emerges from the Savannah docks to write for Atlanta's award-winning Downtown magazine. Mentored by the charismatic editor-in-chief, Smoky gets awards for covering the city's war on poverty. As the novel gains momentum, she dumps wealthy Brad to find adventure with Freedom Summer veteran Lucas-only to lose him to the war in Vietnam. Siddons (Hill Towns, HarperCollins, 1993, and other very popular novels), one of the first senior editors of Atlanta magazine, has drawn on memory to create a satisfying historical romance spiced with wry humor.
--Joyce Smothers, Monmouth Cty. Lib., Manalapan, N.J.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.