What readers think of Nora, Nora, plus links to write your own review.

A great book, from the heart, and at the heart of experience. Better told memories of growing up in the complexities of the South, how a young girl stumbles into womanhood, and loving. Bravo!

Niki Taylor
Nora, Nora by Anne Rivers Siddons is the latest in a long line of dramatic southern novels with interesting female characters by Siddons. This one involves a twelve-year-old girl named Peyton McKenzie who is frail and sensitive to the ways of the world. She blames herself for her mother's death since her mother died in childbirth. She belongs to the Losers' Club, a club where the members tell the dumbest things they did. Other members include a crippled black boy and an overweight caretaker who lives with his mother. Peyton and her distant widowed father are changed when Nora Findlay, a cousin of Peyton's mother, comes into town in a pink convertible. She stays with them and shakes up their small Georgia town of 1961 with her radical ideas and dressing style(not wearing a bra). Nora's past stay in Cuba and Peyton's paternal Scottish grandmother's superstitions all intertwine in the plot which is defined by Peyton's change.
Siddons' descriptions are masterful, almost on par with Janet Fitch's White Oleander. She describes the southern scenery and Peyton's inner turmoil with precision. Nora is a grand character and fully believable. My only problems are with a couple of plot twists involving Peyton's mother and the end of the book. They just didn't seem right. Other than that, Siddons has enough vivid descriptions and characters to entertain and enthrall the reader.
For more of my book reviews, go to my website http://www.mrkhgoddess.homestead.com/untitled2.html

Judith King
When I started reading this, I kept thinking it was an awful lot like To Kill A Mockingbird, and I think that was deliberate on Siddons' part. We have Peyton, whose mother died after her birth, Dad, Aunt Augusta, the members of The Losers Club: Peyton, Ernie who is 34 and lives with mom, and Boot, a little boy with a birth defect which causes him to wear a shoe with a buildup of six inches, and Clothilde/Chloe, Boot's grandmother and cook for Peyton and her Dad. Peyton is a tall, scrawny prepubescent, and truly considers herself a loser. Of these, Aunt Augusta is the best drawn character early, and a true witch she is, too. The time is 1961, in a small town south of Atlanta. Enter Nora: Peyton's cousin (2nd or 3rd) on her deceased mother's side. Nora is young, hip, outlandish in attire and language (wait till she describes the color of..) driving a pick Thunderbird. She has... a past. Oh oh. Have to say this is not one of Siddons' best, but it is a good story and a quick read.