Off Season [Paperback]

Anne Rivers Siddons (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2009

Acclaimed novelist Anne Rivers Siddons's new novel is a stunning tale of love and loss.


For as long as she can remember, they were Cam and Lilly--happily married, totally in love with each other, parents of a beautiful family, and partners in life. Then, after decades of marriage, it ended as every great love story does...in loss. After Cam's death, Lilly takes a lone road trip to her and Cam's favorite spot on the remote coast of Maine, the place where they fell in love over and over again, where their ghosts still dance. There, she looks hard to her past--to a first love that ended in tragedy; to falling in love with Cam; to a marriage filled with exuberance, sheer life, and safety-- to try to figure out her future.

It is a journey begun with tender memories and culminating in a revelation that will make Lilly re-evaluate everything she thought was true about her husband and her marriage.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In Siddons's stirring novel, the recently widowed Lily Constable returns to her childhood summer home in Maine to sift through formative memories of her parents and her first love. Its difficult to imagine a more marvelous performance than Jane Alexanders. Alexander captures the strength and vulnerability of Lily from childhood to late middle age, and perfectly renders the physical weight of Lilys grief at her losses. She skillfully navigates the novels cast of characters, from the slow, deep and thoughtful drawl of Lilys father to the high-pitched, false charm of the vicious young neighbor whose poison darts put tragic events in motion. Alexander also brings to life the great unnamed character in the book—the natural world, giving voice to birds and even a talking cat, and intuitively understanding the life-giving power of the sea. This is an example of how a good novel can become magnificent when it is beautifully told. A Grand Central hardcover (reviewed online). (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

From Booklist

Her family’s cottage on the coast of Maine is haunted, and that suits Lilly Constable just fine. Returning to Edgewater after the death of her beloved husband, Cam, Lilly takes comfort in carrying on detailed conversations with the spirit that she feels pervades the site of so much joy, and yet so much tragedy, in her life. Revisiting the happy times of her marriage and their unconventional courtship also propels Lilly further down memory lane, however, forcing her to recall the years spent living in isolation with her widowed father after her mother’s death from breast cancer, and the summer she turned 11 and her first love, Jon, died in a tragic boating accident. As Lilly works through her grief for her husband, mother, and old friend, she uncovers startling revelations about the very people she thought she knew best. With a powerhouse ending dazzling in its stealth and ambiguity, master storyteller Siddons delivers a dramatically evocative tale that magically summons a bygone time of innocence and intrigue. --Carol Haggas --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing; Reprint edition (July 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446698296
• ISBN-13: 978-0446698290
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 1 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (134 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #511,911 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Return of a good novelist with "Off Season", August 4, 2008

By 

Janice Pitts "Mayerivergal" (Bluffton, SC United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Off Season (Hardcover)

While I do not agree that "Off Season" is Ms. Siddons best book, I will say it is her best since "Colony". I was disappointed in her more recent novels and feel that she has certainly redeemed herself with this haunting story of a widow revisting her childhood and her summers spent on the Maine coast where she met her husband. In many ways it is a coming of age story and in others a love story. Her character development is excellent and one feels they are actually at Edgewater watching Lilly as a tomboy and then a developing young woman. The author brings alive Lily's parents, brother and those who make up her world.

I, personally, was not happy with the ending which I thought could have been developed better which is the reason I did not rate this novel 5 stars. However, all in all it is a fine novel and a credit to Ms. Siddons.

47 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Oh, please!, August 24, 2008

By 

Rita Warren (Westlake Village, Ca USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Off Season (Hardcover)

While I have been a great fan of Anne Rivers Siddons since her first novel and have read everything, I found "Off Season" very disappointing. Her dialogue of children is so adultlike that I can't imagine any child under the age of 25 speaking those lines...or articulating the emotions. They were like miniature adults, not children, and therefore seemed ludicrous to me. There were story arcs I wanted finished that didn't get done and explanations for those innuendoes that blanketed the latter one quarter of the book. What exactly was the relationship with Peaches Davenport and Cam? And why in the world would Cam -- whom we are led to believe had impeccable taste, be drawn to the nasty, shrieking Peaches?

On the other hand, I read the book on my Kindle in two days, not able to put it down, which says something for Siddons and her compelling writing.
But this is no "Peachtree Road," which to me is by far her best work.

41 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What's the mystery?, August 31, 2008

By 

Christina Anne Roden "Amazon music critic" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Off Season (Hardcover)

SPOILER ALERT -- come on, folks! It's pretty plain what happened at the end of this book. Hubby had an ongoing affair with Wifey's spiteful girlhood Nemesis, whom he had met while alone -- off season -- at the couple's summer place in Maine. The sight of the lookalike son his mistress bore him so shocks Wifey when she meets him years later -- also off-season -- that she drops dead on the spot. She then wakes on the other side in the arms of her true love -- who is NOT her cheating dog of a husband but a boy who drowned when she eleven years old and has been her guardian spirit ever since. The end.

It's a nicely written book overall. But I agree with some reviewers that the kitty was a bit much.

Also, writerly tics are setting in -- why does every ARS book seem to have a white-blond dreamboat and scads of redheads? An irrepressibly, pointlessly evil woman? A supposedly loving but unfaithful husband? Blacks who talk like Mammy in "Gone With The Wind"? Down-Easters who sound as though they just crawled out of some Stephen King trailer park but nonetheless say "you-all" like Southerners? Endless references to BO and other malodorous emissions? And why does the present lead character have a name straight out of "Colony" but seems unrelated to those particular Potters and Constables?

These are the things that mystify me. Too bad because otherwise, the lady can certainly write!