[7LR]⋙ Libro Gratis Sweetwater Creek Anne Rivers Siddons 9780060837013 Books

Sweetwater Creek Anne Rivers Siddons 9780060837013 Books

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Sweetwater Creek Anne Rivers Siddons 9780060837013 Books

This book was a bland mess with a weak, watery (pun intended) plot and superficial characters who really needed to be explored and fleshed-out by a writer who knows how to do it. Twelve year old Emily seems to go unnoticed by most of her family and her personality is a bit questionable. She is lonely but does nothing to involve herself with her twin brothers (who were present only as plot devices) or her father. They, in turn, ignore her and don't seem to care that she has no friends at all, and has conversations with her dog and her dead older brother throughout the book. The dog was cute, but the constant chatting with her dead brother was off-putting. Then enters Lulu, who, instead of being mysterious as I believe the author hoped, comes off as completely schizophrenic. Lulu's boyfriend who shows up late in the book is written so stiltedly he appears to be some sort of monster and does not resemble the brilliant, well-to-do young man from a good family who is preparing to take the bar exam we are told he is. He is portrayed as something not human. There were beautiful descriptions of the Lowcountry around Sweetwater Farm, but entirely too much of it. The author uses a heavy hand to beat us over the head with the creek, the river, the fields, the oaks, the deer moss, the Spanish moss, the stars, the brambles, the paths, the mullet, the oysters, the hummocks, the mudflats, etc, etc, etc. We are also left with many unanswered questions: Why did Emily's mother leave them; Why was Emily so reticent to even leave the boundaries of the farm; What was wrong with Buddy; Why did he shoot himself; Why did Aunt Jenny leave if she was worried about Emily and the strange Lulu; Why was Lulu completely manic; Why was Lulu so weak she couldn't unburden herself to anyone but a twelve year old girl; Why was the boyfriend, Yancy, so totally unbelievable and vile? Lastly, I was really irritated by much of the ending, beginning with Emily's race to escape (something that came out of Yancy?). She runs from the woods toward the house and seeing a light on inside, makes much of the fact that her father is still awake...and she must reach her father. She runs as hard as she can to reach him and then - nothing. We don't know if she did, if she spoke to him, if he helped Lulu or comforted his frightened daughter. We are left completely mystified...at least I was!


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Sweetwater Creek Anne Rivers Siddons 9780060837013 Books Reviews

SWEETWATER CREEK, along with NORAH, NORAH, and to a lesser degree, ISLANDS, returns to the kind of storytelling Anne Siddons does best -- a lovely coming of age story set in the South. There's a blurb on the jacket that says you don't read her books, you live in them -- and I lived in this one. I buried myself in it for two days --putting off finishing it simply because I was enjoying it too much for it to end.

As one who also loves and needs the sea and the marshes, her descriptions are perfect and incredibly evocative. I think even someone who has lived in the Midwest will easily conjure up the beautiful landscape of the Southern marshlands. The main character Emily is well-drawn and someone with whom you become involved very quickly. I've read all of Anne's books -- and have had the pleasure of working with her several times on the Atlanta Writers in Concerts -- and this is one of her best.
This is a sweet, rather slow-moving story full of descriptive scenery depicting South Carolina's Low County. Sweetwater is an old plantation, now used by its owners as the head quarters of a family business dedicated to the breeding and training of prized duck hunting dogs named Boykin Spaniels. The plantation rests near Sweetwater Creek , and is the setting for a twelve year old girl's coming of age story. Raised by a distracted father and two older brothers with whom she has little connection, Emmy's heart longs to heal from the past, which involves the death of a beloved brother as well as her mother's abandonment. Left to her own devices, Emmy is a natural dog trainer that lives in an isolated world until Lulu Foxworth comes to stay with the Parmenter family for the summer, eventually turning their lives upside down.

Sweetwater Creek is a rich, coming of age story told beautifully and authentically with fully developed characters who reside in an uncommonly soulful setting. If you like a book that reads like a song of the South, this is for you.
One of the joys of reading Anne Rivers Siddons is reveling in her beautiful way with words. Siddons paints pictures that are so real you see, feel, and smell her images. And those images are often of her Lowcountry, that magical part of South Carolina that is Charleston and its surrounding areas. Sweetwater Creek is right in the middle of that Lowcountry, and it is as much a character in Siddons’s novel titled the same, Sweetwater Creek, as is the main character, thirteen year old Emily Parmenter. This is a coming of age story like none other. Emily trains Boykin spaniels, and she is so good at it because she can actually speak to the dogs with her eyes and her inner voice. She also speaks to her long-dead brother Buddy, and he answers her. And into her mundane life comes Lulu, a young emotionally wounded woman from a very rich Charleston family. Lulu is a major influence on Emily, but the truth is that Emily is just as much an influence on Lulu, and that is what drives Emily’s coming of age. This is a beautiful, beautiful novel. I found it difficult to get into—the first fifty pages or so seemed slow to me—but perhaps that was Siddons’s plan, to move us slowly into her plot until we were so entangled in the lives of Emily and Lulu and the rest that we couldn’t put it down. I know I had a hard time putting this down, and in fact the last 150 pages were read almost in one sitting. And lest you think, from my telling of Emily talking to dogs and her dead brother, that this is some sort of supernatural thing, it is not—but then again when you fully embrace the magic spell of the Lowcountry, perhaps it is.
This book was a bland mess with a weak, watery (pun intended) plot and superficial characters who really needed to be explored and fleshed-out by a writer who knows how to do it. Twelve year old Emily seems to go unnoticed by most of her family and her personality is a bit questionable. She is lonely but does nothing to involve herself with her twin brothers (who were present only as plot devices) or her father. They, in turn, ignore her and don't seem to care that she has no friends at all, and has conversations with her dog and her dead older brother throughout the book. The dog was cute, but the constant chatting with her dead brother was off-putting. Then enters Lulu, who, instead of being mysterious as I believe the author hoped, comes off as completely schizophrenic. Lulu's boyfriend who shows up late in the book is written so stiltedly he appears to be some sort of monster and does not resemble the brilliant, well-to-do young man from a good family who is preparing to take the bar exam we are told he is. He is portrayed as something not human. There were beautiful descriptions of the Lowcountry around Sweetwater Farm, but entirely too much of it. The author uses a heavy hand to beat us over the head with the creek, the river, the fields, the oaks, the deer moss, the Spanish moss, the stars, the brambles, the paths, the mullet, the oysters, the hummocks, the mudflats, etc, etc, etc. We are also left with many unanswered questions Why did Emily's mother leave them; Why was Emily so reticent to even leave the boundaries of the farm; What was wrong with Buddy; Why did he shoot himself; Why did Aunt Jenny leave if she was worried about Emily and the strange Lulu; Why was Lulu completely manic; Why was Lulu so weak she couldn't unburden herself to anyone but a twelve year old girl; Why was the boyfriend, Yancy, so totally unbelievable and vile? Lastly, I was really irritated by much of the ending, beginning with Emily's race to escape (something that came out of Yancy?). She runs from the woods toward the house and seeing a light on inside, makes much of the fact that her father is still awake...and she must reach her father. She runs as hard as she can to reach him and then - nothing. We don't know if she did, if she spoke to him, if he helped Lulu or comforted his frightened daughter. We are left completely mystified...at least I was!