Customer Reviews

Downtown (Thorndike Paperback Bestsellers)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

he became a bestselling novelist!

I love Anne Rivers Siddons and I bet that the photographer in DOWNTOWN still does too, in his own weird way.

This story is partly autobiographical but not enough so to be a memoir. The editor is patterned on the notorious and terrific Jim Townsend of Atlanta Magazine, where Siddons worked in the '60s and the staff members she worked with then show up with personalities slightly skewed. It's obvious to the reader that every bit of the material here is close to Siddons's heart. In some places she seems restrained, as though she's holding something back; in others she lets loose and her youthful passion surfaces.

I lost my paperback in a recent move (I'll replace it with a hardback so it'll last) or I'd copy a passage so you could see the sensuousness of her writing. She is, without a doubt, one of the finest wordsmiths practicing today. She writes about things that are part of her, what she has known and what she cares about -- and she'll make it all a part of you, too.

Sunnye Tiedemann

I've read a few of Anne Rivers Siddons books so far, and they were mostly light reading, the story of a woman who has some issues and then seeks to resolve them. But Downtown is a different and more complicated book. This book details many of the civil movements in the 60s like the Vietnam war, the African-American quest for equality, and the changing of society. The different types of characters in this book are fascinating, from the upper crust society types to the people living in projects and slums. The narrator, Smoky, is a sort of tabula rasa, a blank slate who records many of the changes around her, as she herself changes. Not having lived through this period in history, I found that reading this book gave me a lot of insight into the lives of people in the 60s. It was a very engaging read and I would highly recommend it. And the ending is somewhat surprising, which should keep you tuned in until the last page.

Just wondered if anyone else has ever cottoned to the fact that the scene where Smoky visits La Carrousel with Luke, and sits with him, John Howard, and Juanita the Black Panther, is duplicated from "Peachtree Road"? Check out Chapter 16 of PR, in which Shep, Lucy, and Jack Venable visit the same club. Much of it has been translated verbatim, even to Smoky's awareness of her white flesh glowing "rottenly among all the rich shades of blackness around her" (or something like that), the same dialogue with two of MLK Jr's lieutenants, and the same description and encounter with King himself. What's up with that, I wonder? Did the author run out of inspiration...or did she underestimate her audience's intelligence? I agree with the assessments below, by the way, that it's a substandard effort. Siddons can do, and has done, much better.

I am an avid fan of Ann Rivers Siddons but I thought this book would never end and when it did I couldn't believe she would waste so much effort on a self-indulgent group of people. Normally her characters have character but these people were all shallow, unthinking dilletantes. However I am an older person and perhaps should listen to my nieces and their children when they keep insisting-- this is the nineties.

The author is not at her best. Her books like Hill Towns and Fault Lines about middle aged women in troubled marriages are much more interesting. The prose doesn't flow well either. It required concentration for a relatively light subject.

I first encountered this story in the pages of Cosmo--it hooked me and I went out immediately to buy and finish it. Anne Rivers Siddons writes the kind of books that you don't want to end. She creates another world--really paints a unique vision with her words. This story rings so true, it really has that feel of authenticity--almost autobiographical even. I have read most of her other books as well, but this one which I read a few years ago remains my favorite...As an aspiring writer, her writing both inspires and intimidates me it is so good!

This is the first book I read from Anne Rivers Siddons. I had just moved to Atlanta, and I had heard that this author also lived in Atlanta and that all her novels were based in the South.

I enjoyed reading this novel, not only because I was familiar with most of the places described in the book, but also because I liked very much the style the author uses to describe the characters, their emotions.

Suffice to say, I was totally "hooked" and I have read almost all of her books.

You've read reviews that give you the basic story line of this book so I won't go into that. You've read the Editorial Reviews and I can't say I agree with them. Don't we read fiction to escape our world, the reality of it, and enter a fictional world that the author so generously created for us? Well, I do and I think you do also.

This book isn't action packed, filled with buried body parts or "sheet" action that will leave you standing in a cold shower. No, Siddons writes good old fashioned fiction stories where the story itself is the excitement that keeps you reading.

To be honest, Anne Rivers Siddons writes books for women. Forget the fellas, ladies, her books are all ours! No man could understand the emotional feeling Rivers puts into her stories. The ups and downs of a woman's life. The happy times and the sad times that we all survive. When I crave a well written book that I can seriously sink my teeth into, I go for one of hers and this book is as good as any of her others.

So get settled into your favorite chair, tell everyone to leave you alone and open the book that will "take you away".

In Downtown, Anne Rivers Siddons lovingly recreates boom-town Atlanta in the 1960's, and places Smokey O'Donnell, a twenty-six-year-old virginal Irish Catholic girl from staid Savannah (a thinly-cloaked stand-in for Siddons, herself) in the thick of the most exciting and momentous times the city has witnessed since the Civil War. Smokey cheerfully crosses the bridge from the class-smothered old south of her roots, to the new south which spreads around her like a banquet. She steps forward into a dream job with a progressive arts and culture magazine, and begins a series of romantic and political adventures, the likes of which she could not have dreamed back in her native Savannah. Smokey comes to know members of the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King, and is there at its height, before its is replaced in the public consciousness by the more radical protest movement against the Vietnam War.

Smokey's story easily fills the pages of Downtown and succeeds because she is in her optimistic innocence, fulfilling the sort of dream so many women of all times and places have had. Who does not aspire to leave behind the past and leap face-forward into a new and better life where a real difference for the best can be achieved? In the enjoyable tale called Downtown, we get to live vicariously through Smokey's triumph.

A fine novel that resurrects a time and place and should be a worthy read for almost anyone.

Anne Rivers Siddons has introduced me to a part of my country that I know nothing about: the South. Growing up approximately at the same time as Siddons, my life experiences are similar but the locales are so different. Her ability to create a sense of time and place are remarkable. Her characters have complexity and depth. While "Downtown" is not my favorite, I find it fills in a nitch about Atlanta that needed exploration. "Peachtree Road" is a good place to begin with Siddons. And if you want another perspecitve about this period of the South's history, check out Thomas Cook's "Streets of Fire". Thanks to both of these authors for their immense wealth of knowledge, ability to spin a yarn and make me care about their protagonists.