Hill Towns: A Novel [Paperback]

Anne Rivers Siddons (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 18, 2009

A single traumatic event in her childhood irrevocably marked Catherine Gaillard, leaving her stranded in her cloistered mountaintop Tennessee town for thirty years. But now she is embarking upon a life-changing trip to Italy with her husband, Joe, hoping to put the incident behind her forever. As they make their way across the breathtaking countryside of Tuscany with two other couples, Cat and Joe soon feel themselves being pulled in separate directions, and the fabric of their marriage begins to unravel. And a journey that began as a carefree tour crosses unexpected boundaries, carrying them deep into the heart of their relationship, becoming the ultimate test of their love.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Although Hill Towns is a coming-of-age story, it's no Romeo and Juliet. There are no young lovers flirting and bedding each other, thinking they've invented the act--this novel centers around adults. The main characters have been married for more than 20 years and believe they know each other absolutely. A trip to Italy shows them there is still much to learn.

Catherine "Cat" Gaillard narrates her own story, beginning with a gothic childhood of the sort that inspires folk ballads and tasteless jokes. Orphaned at age 5 when her parents are killed in a freakish accident, Cat chooses to live on Morgan's Mountain as the ward of chilly, crazy grandparents, though saner family members are willing to take her in. She reasons that, "From there I would always know what was coming. From there I would see it long before it saw me."

The rest of the story follows Cat and her husband, Joe, on their journey of midlife discovery. They both flirt with the possibility of an affair, they bicker, challenge assumptions, make new friends, drink too much, eat fabulous food, and tour Rome, Florence, and Venice. It's like being there. Siddons lets you inhabit Cat's mind and experience her struggle to overcome agoraphobia, her uncertainties about Joe, and, most of all, her neophyte-traveler's view of Italy. Hill Towns is an exploration of a mature relationship, but it's also an effective travelogue. Read it and see if you don't start to crave caffé granita on the piazza. --Brenda Pittsley --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

"Americans behave badly in Italy," observes a perspicacious character in Siddon's ( Colony ) latest, an evocative, gothic tale of the dark ties binding a long-married couple. Cat Gaillard's life was irrevocably marred at age five when a truck plowed into her hedonistic parents, who were making love on a bridge. Raised in a small, southern hill town at the foot of the Blue Ridge mountains, Cat found safety within the rarified confines of its resident college and refused ever after to leave. Her agoraphobia entrances her husband Joe, a pedantic dean of English who revels in being Cat's strength and feels threatened when therapy frees her somewhat for a holiday abroad; they will roam across Italy as the unlikely companions of Joe's protege Colin and his new bride Maria. Other fellow travelers include Yolanda, a hilariously bitchy, oversexed Martha Stewart knockoff; Sam, a bluff, sweat-scented painter mesmerized by Cat; and his Machiavellian wife Ada, who will do anything to jumpstart Sam's creative motor. As a gritty, hot wind blows the group through Venice and into Tuscany, the hypocrisies cementing Cat's marriage are exposed. Siddons artfully conjures a violently seductive, sensual world peopled by characters boiling with elemental emotions: fear, lust, aching love. But the deliberately lyric cadences of her prose, though generally rich and enjoyable, are sometimes cloying and forced. $250,000 ad/promo; Literary Guild main selection; author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Reprint edition (August 18, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061715735
• ISBN-13: 978-0061715730
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,084,238 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars very disappointing book from a usually awesome author, August 21, 2005

By 

Donna K. "bookcrosser" (Long Island, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hill Towns (Mass Market Paperback)

I wanted so badly to like this book. I recently relished reading Anne River Siddons' The House Next Door, and have thoroughly enjoyed other books she's written. As an Italian-American, I can't resist books that are set in Italy, and reviews have described this book as a travelogue through the hills of Tuscany. I suppose my expectations were very high for an "Under The Tuscan Sun"-like novel written by an author whose style I admire and appreciate.

I picked this book up three times, tried moving onto other reading material and returning to it afterwards, hoping I'd be in a different mindset and could open up to it better, but this novel simply wasn't going to make its way into my heart despite having so much promise.

The two main characters were quite weird, and not very likeable. The book opens in a university town in the mountains of Tennessee, with an agorophobic heroine who won't leave the hill on which she lives. Eventually, with therapy she is able to take a trip to Italy with her husband. The dynamics of these characters and their relationship is too intense. What saves the novel is the luscious settings, which the author succeeds in describing in vivid detail.

Still, I found the book so oppressingly boring that I had to quit reading about 1/2 of the way through, and just skimmed through to the end. The couple had a blind daughter, who was briefly mentioned in the opening chapters - now that's a storyline that should have been developed better. It would have been fascinating to learn how a mother who is afraid to leave her community raises a blind child into a well-rounded, quite normal adult.

All in all, this book was a huge disappointment, although it can't be said that I didn't try my best to appreciate it.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, September 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Hill Towns (Mass Market Paperback)

After reading and loving 4 other Anne Rivers Siddons books I could hardly wait to sit down with this book. It is a 400 page story of a group of people traveling Italy and eating and sightseeing and eating and sightseeing with a little sexual tension thrown in. If this was my first Siddons book I probably would have never bought a second one. It is certainly not in the same league as her book "Up Island."

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not Siddons's best, alas., February 3, 2004

By 

jeffsdate "jeffsdate" (Boxford, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hill Towns (Mass Market Paperback)

I agree with what most others say -- not the author's best! I actually liked the parts in Italy much better than the beginning, which I thought went on for WAY too long, with Cat harping on and on about her terrible childhood and her agoraphobia. Boooring. In fact, I considered not continuing with the book after about 50 pages of Idyllic Life On The Mountain and Great Sex With My Husband. But the Italian stuff was interesting.
I haven't read all of her books yet, but Colony is fabulous and so were Downtown and Up Island. Outer Banks was pretty good, too. Interesting how it seems like Siddons's married heroines always stay faithful in the end, no matter how jerky their husbands are and how sexy the competition is. Guess she is really a traditional Southern girl at heart!