Islands [Unabridged, Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Anne Rivers Siddons (Author), Kate Fleming (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2004

Anne Rivers Siddons's insightful and deeply felt narrative takes us back into the place she knows best -- Carolina's Low Country.

Anny Butler is a caretaker, a nurturer, first for her own brothers and sisters, and then as a director of an agency devoted to the welfare of children. What she has never had is a real family. That changed when she met Lewis Aiken, an exuberant surgeon fifteen years older than Anny. When they marry, she finds her family. Not a traditional one, but a group of Charleston childhood friends who are inseparable, who are one another's surrogate family. They are called the Scrubs.

Instantly upon meeting them at the old beach house on Sullivans Island, which they co-own, Anny knows that she has found home and family.

Bad things begin to happen, but still the remaining Scrubs cling together, watched over and bolstered by Camilla Curry, the heart and core of their group. It is the first time Anny has felt this kind of love and support. But Anny must learn that everything is not as it seems, that some loves carry a secret and terrible price.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Middle-aged readers especially will warm to Siddons's 15th novel, in which a group of old friends play together, age together and endure the vicissitudes of fate. Returning to the Carolina low country where she is most at home, Siddons explores the mystique of an elite social strata whose members are held together by bloodlines, loyalty and tradition, and by the love of their city, Charleston, and the offshore islands-Edisto and Sullivan's-where they spend their leisure time. Newcomer Anny Butler, the director of a Charleston philanthropic social services agency, is accepted into the close-knit group, who call themselves the Scrubs, when she marries surgeon Lewis Aiken. Thereafter, the novel records the idyllic lives of beautiful people who have wealth, intelligence, breeding and a passion for hunting dogs. Siddons dwells lovingly on details of landscape and atmosphere, flora and fauna, home decoration, and food specialties and the bistros where they are served. Everything is picturesque to the nth degree, somewhat like a Thomas Kincaid painting. Relentlessly chirpy dialogue moves the plot along, while various illnesses and accidents take their toll on once happy couples. Lush overwriting sets the tone: one character "shone like a beacon in the great gilded room, and people flocked around her as if to a fire"; later, she is perceived as "thrumming with a kind of palpable radiance... you could almost see the dancing particles of light around her." When Siddons shows that nothing is what it seems, the revelation is almost inevitable. Yet she cannot be surpassed in evoking a kind of life peculiar to the South, with its emphasis on grace, good manners and stoic endurance. Her fans will find Siddons's narrative charisma intact and blooming.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Siddons is the best-selling author of 14 novels, and her work is often lauded as moving and powerful. How about smarmy and lame? How else to describe her latest, set in the Carolina Low Country. Head of an agency devoted to helping handicapped children, Anny Butler, long resigned to being single, meets Lewis Aiken when she brings one of her clients to the free clinic he operates. A longtime womanizer with a notorious reputation, Lewis is instantly reformed upon meeting Anny, sweeps her off her feet, and immediately introduces her to his stalwart inner circle, dubbed the Scrubs. Although they profess disdain for the avarice and materialism of contemporary culture, they are forever putting away cases of high-end champagne, in between dining on goose and caviar, all of which is consumed in any number of fabulous homes. Let's see, there's the ocean-front beach house, the country manor, and the perfectly decorated in-town residence. Nonetheless, Anny considers herself a world-class bohemian because she is given to riding motorcycles (meticulously restored, of course) while bellowing, "Aiyee," which is what a few readers might yell about halfway through this novel. However, many other readers, including Siddons' legion of fans, will no doubt find her trademark mixture of high-mindedness and rampant consumerism a powerful draw. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Sound Library; Unabridged edition (May 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0792732138
• ISBN-13: 978-0792732136
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (65 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,134,153 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Lovely locale, rich writing, but not always believable..., July 14, 2005

By 

Cynthia K. Robertson (beverly, new jersey USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Islands (Hardcover)

I purchased Islands by Anne Rivers Siddons to take on a vacation to the Low Country of Charleston, SC. Islands is set in Charleston, Sullivan's Island, Edisto and John's Island, so I thought it would be the perfect book. While I enjoyed most of Islands, it morphed into something really bizarre at the end.

Anny Butler is the director of a Charleston children's welfare agency. In the course of her work, she meets orthopedic doctor and native Charlestonian, Lewis Aiken. Aiken falls in love with the spinster Butler (hard to figure out why) and after a whirlwind courtship, they are married. By virtue of their marriage, Anny becomes part of "the Scrubs." The Scrubs consist of four couples, most native Charlestonians. Four of them work in the medical field, and thus the name. The Scrubs have purchased a beach house on Sullivan's Island, and they spend almost every weekend there together. The first day Anny meets the Scrubs, they pledge that when they start failing, they will move in together and take care of each other. Over time, events happen that will change the dynamics of the Scrubs including a hurricane, fires, deaths and infidelity. Three of them take their vow to each other seriously. But story evolves into one of love gone awry, obsession and revenge.

Islands definitely lacks credibility. Dr. Aikens owns a house on The Battery, a house on Bull Street, a big plantation on Edisto and the beach house with the Scrubs. Months and sometimes, years go by without Lewis or Anny using one house or the other. When tragedies occur, most of the Scrubs are likely to abandon one house (without selling it, of course) and purchase something new. They are also likely to disappear for months at a time (don't know of many jobs where such things are possible). The Scrubs forsake their families, children and grandchildren for the sake of the group. And it's a stretch to think that a young librarian would abandon her career (and in some cases, her 7 year old daughter) to become a cook, cleaner and caretaker.

Still, Islands has two great things going for it: the Charleston Low Country and Siddons' rich, lyric writing. Charleston is always a wonderful backdrop, and it was especially interesting reading about how hurricane Hugo affected the locals. Siddons' descriptions of the Low Country can be pure poetry, and only Pat Conroy surpasses her in this regard.

So while Islands wasn't quite as good as I had hoped, it was still a good book for a vacation-especially to the Low Country.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Too much!, October 25, 2004

By 

Lulu (Hamilton, OH USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Islands (Hardcover)

Although I have enjoyed ARS earlier works like Colony and Outer Banks, I find myself getting more and more impatient with each successive offering. I found Islands to be nothing more than one overlong description after another of the too, too wonderful southern climate (even though it is laden with unbearable humidity and mosquitoes), landscape (can pluff mud be mentioned one more time?) cozy houses (all main characters own several, of course), furnishings (lots of rump sprung sofas, whatever that is), wonderful dogs and over privileged people who manage to look like teenagers well into their golden years. All of this puncuated with an occasional death, disappearance or discovery of infidelity thrown in to keep the reader's interest. I, like another reviewer, found myself skimming over some of the more unbearable blather in a desperate search for a plot!

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Terrible!!, July 20, 2004

By 

M. LAVIGNE - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Islands (Hardcover)

In my opinion, "Islands" is an unreadable piece of work. I found it completely contrived, the characters one dimensional, and the dialogue ridiculous.

I have read and enjoyed every Anne Rivers Siddons book written, with the exception of this book. I can't really put my finger on it, but this book made my skin crawl!!