- Paperback: 384 pages
- Publisher: Pocket (Jan 12 2006)
- Language: French
- ASIN: B0037YAKHO
- Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
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Product Description
From Amazon
The young heroine of Nora, Nora comes from a long line of angst-ridden adolescents, stretching back through Holden Caulfield and Frankie Addams to Huckleberry Finn. Yet Peyton McKenzie certainly has good reason to be unhappy. Her household, in the small Georgia town of Lytton, is shadowed by the deaths of her mother and older brother. Her father, meanwhile, has withdrawn into mournful distraction: "When Buddy died in an accident in his air-force trainer, when Peyton was five, Frazier McKenzie closed up shop on his laughter, anger, small foolishnesses, and large passions. Now, at twelve, Peyton could remember no other father than the cooled and static one she had."
To withstand this mortuary atmosphere--not to mention a touch of small-town claustrophobia--Peyton has founded the Losers Club, where she and two other misfits share their daily doses of unhappiness. But everything changes when her cousin Nora shows up for a visit. This jaunty outsider is unlike anybody else in Kennedy-era Lytton, circa 1961:
The first thing you noticed about Nora Findlay, Peyton thought, was that she gave off heat, a kind of sheen, like a wild animal, except that hers was not a dangerous ferality, but an aura of sleekness and high spirits. There was a padding, hip-shot prowl to her walk, and she moved her body as if she were totally unconscious of it, as if its suppleness and sinew were something she had lived with all her life.At first Nora's high spirits have a tonic effect, jogging both Peyton and her father out of their torpor. But her involvement in racial politics eventually rubs some of Lytton's citizens the wrong way--and puts her young cousin's loyalty to the test. Anne Rivers Siddons handles the narrative with a deft touch for local color (right down to the perpetual "three Coca-Colas in an old red metal ice chest"). But her feeling for her cast of characters is even better, mixing just the right proportions of delicacy and Southern discomfort. --Anita Urquhart --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Shame on you Nora, and keep it up,
By
This review is from: Nora, Nora (Hardcover)
Take a somber seventh-grade tomboy on the edge of womanhood, a sullen father living mostly in his own sad little world, a weird grandmother who tells crows to go tell it to the devil, a pompous aunt who disdains anyone but the uppercrust, a black maid who makes scrumptious apple butter and tosses advice as quick as a salad, a motherless clubfooted black child, a church sexton and grave tender who reads classic books and listens to classical music, add in an assortment of other strange folks, then toss them all into a small town not far from Atlanta in early 1960's about-to-be-integrated Georgia, and you've got an interesting brew. Even better, add a spicy ingredient, such as an outspoken, tell-it-like-it-is, yellow-green eyed redhead named Nora, and you've got a hot new book from Anne Rivers Siddons. When cousin Nora rides into town in her 1955 pink Thunderbird, she cuts through both the melancholy and prejudice of smalltown Southern life, touching everybody in town in some way, especially her young tomboy cousin, Peyton McKenzie. But, in spite of her wild and wonderful powers, Nora brings with her a volatile secret, one that could destroy all that she's accomplished, and all she may want. "Nora, Nora" is a character-driven coming-of-age tale that satisfies.
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Useful Read,
By E.B. Williams "chick lit connoisseur" (Washington DC) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Nora, Nora (Mass Market Paperback)
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.
2.0 out of 5 stars
Couldn't finish this...,
By
This review is from: Nora, Nora (Hardcover)
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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