Customer Reviews

Heartbreak Hotel

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Oh yes, some would say that this story and its characters are "trite and cliched", but, folks, if you grew up in the south in the 50's and 60's you cannot help but recognize yourself - or gain a brilliant glimpse of a southern girl and all that was expected of her. The last thing your parents wanted was for you to, Heaven forbid, have any thoughts of your own - especially if they were in opposition to the standards of the time. Those were the days when you cared what your parents thought of you and you bore bitter consequences if you were a disappointment. It took a lot of courage to venture away from the norm. Ann Rivers Siddons paints vivid pictures of the small town and college settings and the workings of an evolving young mind in that era.

As an avid fan of Mrs. Siddons, I received a flash from Amazon that her new book, "Off Season" is coming out August 13th, so, in preparation for that and because it seems like an eternity since her last book came out, I immediately went down the list of her books to see if there was anything I had not read. Heartbreak Hotel was the only one - and I enjoyed it thoroughly. If this was Siddons' debut novel, she was off to a great start back in 1976 - and she's only gotten better with each novel. After reading Heartbreak Hotel, I will now chomp at the bit until "Off Season" emerges in August.

My daughter and I enjoyed this book very much. I read it first, and passed it on. I could see so many similarities with the experiences and feelings my daughter was relating to me during her first year in college. Maggie may be a young woman of the 1950's, but the issues and events she has to cope with are as real for today's young women. I especially loved the "historical" details of the life of the 1950's young woman - it took me back to those days - and it all rang so true. Catherine Paull

This story takes place at Randolph University, which is Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama. I live in Auburn and it is very emotional to read this book and realize that things like this did happen here. This is the one book that opened my eyes to what racial integration was really like. Some of the passages are so powerful that I had to reread them to get the full impact. Maggie is forced to make decisions that will change her life forever and before this book I could not comprehend the extremes of emotion that people were going through. Anyone remotely interested in the South or integration should read this book.

This is one of my favorites of Siddons! I really related to the main character Maggie, how she goes off to college, matures and slowly begins forming her own opinions on issues. My favorite novels are those of characters who strongly voice their opinions, especially when it's controversial. I loved Aiken and how she pushed Maggie to be a better person by taking off her rose colored glasses and forcing her to open her eyes and really see the world around her...everyone should have a best friend that guides you to grow and reach the potential they've seen in you all along. I highly recommend this book, run out and get it now!!!

Siddons is a talented and readable writer, but this 1976 novel is trite and predictable. It is one of a long line of Southern sorority girls experiencing liberal epiphany novels, set at Southern colleges in the decade from 1950 to 1960, and it offers no fresh insights, and no surprises. All the stock characters appear and act as if they are rigidly following expected plot lines. You have the unawakened but beautiful sorority queen, with the germ of liberal understanding slumbering in her outsider heart. You have the Northern sexually liberated female student, who opens mental doors for the main character. There is the primal blonde, luring hotblooded males into combat, meeting her fate in the alcohol fueled car crash. Of course there are the rich Delta boyfriend and the poor liberal journalist who are locked in their lifelong rivalry. Do I need to mention the Tenessee Williams parents or the drunken housemother, the vaguely reassuring dean of female students, or the good old boy cracker policeman? The book is a good introduction to Siddons talent, but it dragged on and on, and Maggie's "courageous stand" was ridiculously anticlimactic, and her subsequent actions telegraphed from practically page one. Read Peachtree Road instead.

Apparently this book is the first one for author Anne Rivers Siddons. The story focuses on Maggie Deloach as she returns for the summer term before her senior year at a small southern white college in 1956. The weather is hot and steamy and Elvis is hitting his stride. Maggie is the stereotypical popular sorority girl on campus--excelling in her classes but expecting to receive her "Mrs." along with her degree. A visit to her boyfriend's plantation home introduces her to a life even more steeped in tradition and drawn racial lines than her own. While there a jailbreak takes place. When one of the captured men is brought back to town, Maggie finds herself looking into the eyes of the prisoner and seeing herself.

I've read and enjoyed many of Ms. Siddons' southern literature books and this one was no exception. Having been in a college sorority in the 1960's, I also found some of the discussions of sorority life to be quite familiar.

Anne Rivers Siddons is in my top five favorite contemporary authors. She has the best way of making you feel as if you are exactly where the book takes place and in the same time period. This takes place in the south (Alabama for the most part) during the ages of harlequin glasses and the budding civil rights movement. Siddons is able to, through fiction, illuminate what it was like then, which is something that those of us not alive in the 50s/60s simply can't fathom. She takes a naïve southern girl--the epitome of the proper southern belle--and compares and contrasts her against an angry black man accused only of the crime of being black. She "saw a man" and she was changed forever...gaining strength and understanding with every page thereafter. As a reader, you move from giddy 50s college girls and you end in the eye of a civil rights protest and a girl who cannot go back in time and erase what she has learned and what she feels. This story has depth and brings to light how tumultuous the south was at that time.

What was it like for a young lady to attend college in the deep south in the 1950's? It's a world with which I was totally unfamiliar until I read the Anne Rivers Siddons coming-of-age novel, Heartbreak Hotel. The main character is Maggie Deloach, a beautiful and popular sorority member who is "pinned" to the campus heartthrob, and is involved in many school activities, including writing for the campus newspaper. You can imagine what happens when she pens an editorial in 1956 Alabama which ostensibly questions the segregationist society.

The characters are interesting and well-drawn, and the setting is evocative of a time long gone. The plot moves along briskly to the beat of the new rock `n `roll music, particularly, as the title suggests, that of Elvis Presley. I was drawn into Maggie's world by Siddons' compelling writing style, and found it difficult to put this book down once I started reading it.

This is a light read , but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. It happens at the time I was in college, so I recognized the rules of the house and adult supervision. But I was in the North and wasn't aware of the problems these girls faced, integration.
The story tells of Maggie and her enlightenment. Thank goodness it happened and the book ends hopefully, that she will go on and write more about fixing the problem.

I picked up this book at school not realizing it would be about Auburn. More than 20 years latter I still have it. It was the first time I read a book about the area I was in and it started a Love of that kind of story and of the author's writing. I think it is a great story for a girl at college to enjoy and really think about.