The Morning Call from Allentown, Pennsylvania • 75

THE MORNING CALL SUNDAY, OCTOBER 15. 2000 E7 Book Review. Lk'sta CbUH 'Nora' depicts sister Anne Rivers Siddons always wanted Coming of age novel sets an appealing scene TP 7 I 1 AMELIA KUNHARDT The Associated Press Best-selling author Anne Rivers Siddons departs somewhat from her usual style with 'Nora, Nora a coming-of-age novel that is somewhat shorter than her previous fiction. It still touches, however, on the tumultuous civil rights struggles of the author's native Georgia. By JERRY HARKAVY Of The Associated Press BROOKLIN, Maine Best-selling author Anne Rivers Siddons is hard-pressed to say which of her 15 novels she likes the best, but she has no problem reeling off a few of her favorite characters.

There's Maggie, the Southern belle of "Heartbreak Hotel," and Lucy, the headstrong Atlanta beauty in Siddons' 1988 breakout book, "Peachtree Road." And, of course, Maude, the narrator of "Colony," the Southern-born outsider in the summer community along the Maine coast that was modeled on the seaside retreat here where Siddons and her husband, Heyward, spend their summers. The newest addition to the list is Cousin Nora, whose abrupt entry into the life of 12-year-old Peyton McKenzie propels the plot of Siddons' latest work, "Nora, Nora," a coming-of-age novel that marks a departure of sorts from her previous fiction. The red-haired, outrageously unconventional Nora, who motors into town in a flashy pink Thun-derbird, is the imaginary big sister that Siddons, an only child, yearned for while growing up in a Southern town 20 miles south of Atlanta as the civil rights movement was emerging. "She was brave and funny and go-to-hell and all those things. And I guess I realized that she couldn't be that perfect, that she'd have to have her own weaknesses.

But on the whole, I love her. 1 wish there was more of her in me," Siddons, 64, says in an interview before returning to the South ahead of winter. "Nora, Nora" is a departure from many of Siddons' books, which tend to chronicle leading characters over several generations. Shorter than her earlier novels, it focuses on a relatively brief period during 1961 in which Nora's and Peyton's worlds collide. Like a few of the earlier books, however, it touches upon the tumultuous civil rights struggles that were sweeping Siddons' native region as she left her hometown of Fairburn, to attend Auburn University.

During a trip to Atlanta, Nora and Peyton stumble upon a sit-in easy ways, her solo trips to Atlanta, her teaching "dirty" books as a substitute English teacher at the town's segregated high schools. The students in "the School camp" know better than to tell adults about Nora's classes the Santeria ritual drums Nora brought from her time in Cuba, the discussions of "To Kill a Mockingbird." As for Peyton, after some initial reluctance, she basks in Nora's reflected brilliance. And why not? Nora gives her a lost kitten, an Audrey Hepburn haircut, a journal in which to write her thoughts. Peyton doesn't understand why her beloved grandmother, Agnes McKenzie, with her gift for the second sight, isn't all that thrilled with Nora. "I can't see good or bad this time," the elderly woman tells Peyton, insisting she wear a protective herb amulet.

"It's like fog. I don't know what it means." There's nothing subtle about Siddons' foreshadowing. From Nora's arrival in town and her early remarks on Lytton's lack of progress when it comes to civil rights, readers are aware that Nora and the more tradition-bound townspeople are on a collision course. But what's not so predictable is the subsequent return of a local legend, his effect on Nora and Peyton's own role in a betrayal. Siddons' story here doesn't have the depth of Carson McCull-ers' "A Member of the Wedding," or Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird," but it's still emotionally truthful, reminiscent of Jill Mc-Corkle's "Ferris Beach," in which an older cousin also proves a catalyst.

One wishes Siddons had developed some of her secondary characters more fully instead of relying on types. Augusta's social snobbery, for example, arises out of shame of her own background. Frazier McKenzie's too much like Atticus Finch not to bring images of Gregory Peck to mind. And his mother, with her intriguing psychic abilities, vanishes from the story all too quickly. Still, "Nora, Nora" is sweetly evocative, even nostalgic, in its portrayal of a pivotal time in Southern history and a young girl's life.

No, permanents don't last er. But change, Peyton discovers, is with us always. 'Nora, by Anne Rivers Siddons; HarperCollins; $25; 263 pp. By NANCY PATE Of The Orlando Sentinel Despite their names, perma- nents don't last forever. But try telling that to thin, awkward 12-year-old Peyton McKenzie, the main character in Anne Rivers Siddons' appealing new novel, "Nora, Nora," set in the small-town South in 1961.

Even before status-conscious Aunt Augusta drags her off to Rich's in Atlanta for a makeover, Peyton's self-esteem is near zero. After all, didn't Peyton cause her mother's death when she was born? And didn't her distant lawyer-father Frazier become even more detached after Peyton's soldier-brother Buddy died in a-training accident when she was And, finally, isn't she a charter member of the self-proclaimed Losers Club along with fat, pale Ernie Longworth, the sexton at the Methodist Church, and club- footed Boot, the 8-year-old grandson of the McKenzie housekeeper Chloe? And so when Mr. Antoine twirls her around to see a helmet of butter-yellow curls where once there were brown pigtails, Peyton is stunned into silence. And later, when she has tried to repair the damage in the bathtub and ends up with dun-colored Brillo "as dry as rabbit tobacco in fall," Peyton knows there is really only one way for this bad-hair day to end she climbs up in the dogwood tree and won't come down, despite entreaties from Chloe and her father. It is only when a cousin she has never laid eyes on clambers up the tree in the pearly light of dawn that Peyton thinks that perhaps life, might be worth living.

Peyton can hardly take her eyes off the exotic, red-headed young woman from Florida, who drives a pink Thunderbird, smokes Salems and uses swear words. She's never met anyone like Nora Findlay. And neither have most people in little Lytton. Nora hits town "like a comet, trailing delight and outrage in equal parts in her wake." Those in "the Aunt Augusta Camp" wag their tongues at what they view as Nora's free and Even though she numbers a lot of men among her readership, Siddons has been pegged from the start as a "women's writer." To Siddons, that brings to mind "someone who writes romances and light, fluffy things," but she has reluctantly come to accept the label as an albatross she cannot avoid. Book covers chosen by her publisher fuel the perception.

"I told them when I wrote 'Colony' that if they put a woman with her dress blowing in the breeze in front of the book, I will quit," she recalls. The ultimatum apparently worked: the cover showed a woman in blue jeans. Siddons says she and fellow novelist and friend Pat Conroy write about the same things, "but I don't hear him being called a men's writer. But we both bear the Southern writer cross." Many, but not all, of Siddons' novels are set in the South. But even when she shifts the setting to New England, California or Italy, she writes from the point of view of someone who moved there from the South, giving her books a Southern sensibility regardless of location.

by black protesters at a lunch counter and wind up as participants. "It's a very dear subject to me. It really was a great epiphany of my life," says Siddons, who caused a stir when she wrote a column for her college newspaper -in support of racial integration. The column, which she recalls today as "a rather pedantic little thing," prompted the dean of students to call her in and suggest she may want to reconsider what she wrote. She refused, and the newspaper- ran the piece with a disclaimer saying it did not reflect the views of the university.

"I was really aware of the disapproval on campus, and I got the first taste of how it might feel to espouse a cause that was not everybody else's," she says. After graduation, Siddons initially worked in advertising but decided early on that writing was her forte. She worked for Atlanta magazine as the. city was on the brink of a boom, and began writing books after being approached by an editor who took notice of her work and suggested that she turn her talents in that direction. "Southerners have always been great expatriates," she says.

Being pegged as a women's writer or Southern writer hasn't proven a hindrance to sales. Since "Peachtree Road," her all-time best seller, came out, her books have generally lingered on the best-seller list for two months or more. There are more than 14 million copies of her books in print. All her novels were optioned to Hollywood, but only one "Heartbreak Hotel" was made into a film, the 1989 "Heart of Dixie," starring Ally Sheedy. Siddons, who moved from Atlanta to a townhouse in Charleston, S.C., in 1998, faced no writer's deadline as she prepared to bid her seasonal farewell to her summer cottage.

It's next door to Roger Angell's and down the road from the farmhouse where the late E.B. White lived. "Nora, Nora" was the last book of a four-book contract, leaving Siddons with no deadline pressure for the first time since Peachtree Road." But with four or five ideas for newnovels usually percolating, her literary talent is not likely to remain idle for long. Ever wished car shopping was this easy? On cars.com, it is. In seconds cars.com gives you thousands of new and used cars, trucks and SUVs to choose from.

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