Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 5, 1993 TAG: 9308290317
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: reviewed by KATHY G. LUBBERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
new novel, already No. 13 on the best-seller list, Anne Rivers Siddons has taken the Southerners she so lovingly writes about and whirled them around the world. She has not lost us, only broadened our horizons.
Siddons has documented the lives and loves of the New South in earlier works such as Peachtree Road and Outer Banks.
She first ventured out of the South last summer with her novel Colony, set in Maine. Now she takes us to Italy.
Hill Towns is the story of Catherine Gaillard, who dares to face the agoraphobia which has held her to her dear mountain home in Trinity for 30 years. Something happened to Cat as a young child which has kept her from leaving the mountain. Her husband, Joe, has aided and abetted her illness; it is only with the help of her therapist and the embarrassment that their blind daughter can travel the world unaided that forces Cat from her haven.
Cat and Joe accompany friends on their honeymoon tour of Italy, which is scheduled to culminate in the mountain area where Cat feels she will be safe in familiar surroundings. The two couples are joined by an infamous Southern artist who requests that Cat be his next subject for one of his portraits. While she sits, her marriage struggles with the stress of her newly found freedom.
Siddons' best work is in the weaving of intimate relationships and the manner in which we all must learn to give and take - leaning on and later supporting those whom we grow to love and care for deeply.
"Venice robs you of yourself and hands you back changed ... We began to change in earnest, Joe and I, on that first slow ride down the Canal Grande. Or perhaps it was simply that we began to become ... us." Cat and Joe exemplify the give and take necessary in a marriage. The reader is allowed to see the struggles within each charac ter as they grow and change, observing the manner in which very personal decisions are made.
Siddons has won our hearts once again. If you are one of her thousands of followers, you won't be disappointed.
\ Kathy G. Lubbers lives in Greensboro.
by CNB