Customer Reviews

Homeplace (R)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Things are rarely as they seem." That perhaps sums up this wonderful book concisely. Micah (Mike) Winship returns home after a 20-year estrangement from her father who is now dying. Never being close to the man and long a "worldly" woman, Mike is looking to recapture a simpler life. She soon learns that the basic things she once eschewed (family, land, love) are the greatest aspects of life. She reconciles with the great love of her young life who is anything but what he seems. Mike's one-time beautiful older sister has her own plans for the future and the protagonist soon finds herself allying with the man she never dreamed she be close to and a mysterious outsider who plays his way into her trust and heart. This book will appeal to all romantics and those who are close to their family (or wish that they were). It is a novel of the heart and leaves you wanting more. This book will stay with you for a long time!

Somehow I missed this particular book when it came out, though I've been a Siddons fan for a long time. Interesting companion to her newest book NORA, NORA, with a similar pivotal character in virtually the same setting. This is a tale of coming home and discovering your history, with plenty of betrayal and love along the way. Micah Winship, works through a pretty awful childhood and becomes an award winning journalist, when her world collapses and she finds herself called back to Lytton, Georgia. Ms. Siddons is a Southern writer who can make you feel heat, humidity and actually breath the air along with her characters, who also breathe and live and languish. Excellent portrayal of the south with well sketched, believable characters. The story is thought provoking and hopeful.

Micah "Mike" Winship was going home to a place she'd fled in 1963 when her father had thrown her out. It's twenty years later, she's become an award-winning journalist, and has not spoken to her father in all that time. A plea from her sister, Dee Dee asking her to return and help with their father who was dying from prostate cancer and wanted to see her came at a point in Mike's life where she virtually had no other place to go. Mike's world was collapsing around her and she needed a place to go - to re-group, and pull herself together, even if it meant facing the man whose love and acceptance she had tried to gain during her awful childhood. What Mike finally discovers, after more betrayals, is the heart, soul and essence of the man she called `daddy' and a real place called `home'.

This was my first book by this author whose eloquence with the written word is so outstanding that she slips under the skin of the extremely well sketched characters and lets you breathe their air, and pump their blood. You will laugh, cry, and feel each emotion as the author sketches the life of a memorable journey taken by the youngest daughter of coming home again. Totally thought provoking and believable. This is an outstanding classic novel that I see why it has been resurrected and reissued for a new generation of readers to embrace!

Are Editorial Reviews written by people who get paid by the word? I find the summary on this book to be so overblown it's hard to understand just what the book is about.......And I've Read It! But I won't go into the plot yet again. I think you can get a general idea of what the story is about by simply reading the back of a softbound book or the jacket of a hardcover.

You should know that Siddons writes for women. Men could never understand the emotions involved in her stories but women will find a piece of themself in each and every one of them. She writes stories that keep you reading simply because they are written well. I wouldn't recommend them for someone who wants a book to read in bits and pieces, here and there. By reading it in huge clumps you become drawn into the world she created for her characters and in the end, you'll crave more.

This book sits on my home library shelves and will remain there, to be read over and over, for as long as I am able to read. You won't be disappointed if you enjoy a book that makes you feel emotion and a connection with the creative characters the author writes about.

Sit down in that favorite chair of yours, tell everyone to leave you alone and get ready to meet the characters in HOMEPLACE.

Daughters with strained relationships with their dads are not uncommon. Every woman can relate to Micah and her unknowing of her fathers love for her. She may stumble through her life but she learns so many lessons just by coming home. I want the book in hardcover to have forever and to pass on to my daughter. It made me understand my own father more

Ms. Siddon's did it again. A very powerful, interesting novel. It was one I couldn't put down. Thank you for another great Novel.

I could have sworn that I've read all of Siddons' books but when I picked this one up at a garage sale recently, it didn't ring a bell with me at all. Normally, I could pick up a book, start reading it and then after awhile, I'll start to remember the characters and the plot line ... but not this time. It's like falling in love with Anne Rivers Siddons' books all over again. This one is definitely right up there with "Outer Banks" and "The Colony" ~~ my two all-time favorite books.

This one is about Micah Winship Singer also known as Mike. She was born and her birth killed her mother, her father's one and only true love. She grows up in a house filled with silence and anger and mothered by her oldest sister, Dee Dee. After an angry confrontation with her father, Mike packs up and runs away from home. She manages to stay away for 22 years till her sister calls begging her to come home and help with their father, who is dying.

In the background lays a piece of land that has been in the Winship's family for years and her father, John, is devoted to it and its history. Now a developer threatens to overtake the land and tear down the house to build a road through it. Against her will, Mike became involved with the protesting against it ~~ and along the way, she discovers what love and family really is.

Reading this book did hit a little too close to home since my family is undergoing some of the same issues that surrounds a family when someone dies. There is the ancient history between Mike and her father, between Mike and her sister, between Mike and her first true love, Bay, who is the town's successful realtor and there is new history between Sam, her father's attorney and herself. This is a fascinating and wonderful reading! Mike ends up rediscovering what really did matter after all.

It is a really good summer reading ~~ and one that I would definitely recommend for a lazy day. It is not like Siddons' later books ~~ this one still packs a punch to the gut and pulls at the heartstrings.

6-15-06

AR Siddons' books spoil me. When I finish one, I'm always disappointed in the next several fiction books I read unless they're hers. I've recently begun reading them a second time. I've just re-read Homeplace and enjoyed it more this time than I did the first.

I have never read an author in her entirety who has continually amazed and enthraulled me with her skill as a story teller and a weaver of layered stories that unfold with one revelation after another. Anne Rivers Siddons writes in such a way that you feel, sweat, breath, smell, and live her stories right along with the characters...you become another character in the story almost. Her descriptions of the south are sensual, tactile, compelling, and ultimately, full of love for such a mysterious, and sometimes dark place. She truly understands and is able to paint portaites of people that we all know, in scenarios that we haven't thought of before perhaps...but in a way that you just can't walk away from these people. She's one of the most lyrical, and compelling authors of our time. More than a few of her books should be on the "modern classics" lists everywhere. If you are just discovering her...you are in for an absolutaly amazing ride. Enjoy!

I to date have read all but two of Ann Siddon's books. They are the most entrancing books that I have ever read. I highly recomend them. I could not stop turning pages far into the night. Happy reading.