Off Season [Audio Cassette]

Anne Rivers Siddons (Author), Jane Alexander (Narrator)

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Books On Tape (2008)
• ISBN-10: 141595884X
• ISBN-13: 978-1415958841
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (134 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

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
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

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
(REAL NAME)   

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
(REAL NAME)   

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!