Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #316443 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780446527873
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
No one does coastal melodrama like veteran Siddons (Homeplace). Lilly Constable McCall, 53, has led an enviable life—marriage and children with a successful architect, her own success as a sculptor—but husband Cam's death sends her spiraling. She returns to the coastal family cottage in Edgewater, Maine, where she spent her childhood, and where Cam died. There, she recalls the summer of 1962, and the arrival in town of new girl Peaches Davenport, who envies all Lilly has. That includes the attentions of attractive older boy Jon Lowell, who awakens grown-up feelings in Lilly's 11-year-old heart. But it's Lilly's place as the daughter of a Washington, D.C., professor and the sporadically successful painter and activist Elizabeth Constable—that makes Lilly's childhood most attractive to Peaches, and to readers. Jon may have shared her first kiss, and Cam her home and children, but it's the changing relationship between Lilly and the elusive, enigmatic Elizabeth that makes this story fresh. (Aug.)
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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

Review
'Anne Rivers Siddons's body of work is one of the most impressive in contemporary fiction. And, in her beautifully crafted and dazzling new novel OFF SEASON, Ms. Siddons delivers the goods more powerfully than ever. All her books are terriffic, but this one is the best yet - Pat Conroy 'I've always enjoyed Anne Rivers Siddon's books, but this is her best, maybe the book she was born to write. It's a double love story, narrated by a woman who has loved both early and late. The story of Lilly and Jon is one of the best stories of adolescent love - its fierceness and sweetness - that I've ever read. There's also a beautifully drawn picture of Maine dressed in her summer finery...and a few ghosts. Summer is maybe the best time to read this book; if you've ever vacationed on the Maine coast (or ever wanted to), this book isn't just the next best thing, it's the real thing. Bravura storytelling' - Stephen King

Customer Reviews

Return of a good novelist with "Off Season"
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.

Oh, please!
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.

What's the mystery?
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!