Bibliotica

We’re off to Baja Sur for Christmas in a week, and while the only resemblance my parents place outside of La Paz has with any piece of Wilmington NC real estate is proximity to the ocean, I’m still in the mood to read a bunch of Anne Rivers Siddons novels before I get there, because her descriptions of the Carolina coastal lifestyle is very much my dream life: small towns, great books, a beach a short walk away, excellent coffee, good friends - these are my version of bliss.

I don’t have TIME to read any beach books just now, though, and once I get there, Christmas will drive all chances of reading away, anyway. But I do have a book sent to me by the author for review that I’m planning to read on the plane, and I’m carting along a bunch of books to leave with my mother and to be given as gifts to the daughters of one of her friends, a woman from India who wants her daughters to read, “English language novels with strong female role models.” I’m bringing them Little Women, Anne of Green Gables and The Secret Garden. I think they’ll enjoy all three.

Anne Rivers Siddons

We all have “guilty pleasure” authors - Anne Rivers Siddons is one of mine.

I’ve just finished her most recent novel, Islands, and while I have to agree that it’s not her best work, it was still an enjoyable read. She’s returned to the South Carolina Low Country she loves so much, which means that even when you hate the characters, you love the houses they live in, and even when the plot gets rather cheesey, you can still feel the sea breezes and smell the sand, and feel the humidity.

People are often surprised that I read Siddons’ work, because her target demographic is really my mother’s generations, but there’s something compelling about her tragic heroines in their weathered beach houses. Though, admittedly, my favorite of her novels didn’t take place anywhere near a beach.

This novel tells the story of a group of friends - doctors and their wives - who own a Low Country beach house together. It’s fairly typical beach reading: entangled relationships, personal tragedy, a dash of romance. It’s not as meaty as, say, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, but I’d still recommended it.