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If some books are speedboats while others are tugs, ISLANDS definitely tends toward the latter. It's as if the author was suffering from a bad case of writer's block but kept putting words to paper until she could break through it. This technique may be therapeutic for the writer, but it can be tedious for the reader.
Anne Rivers Siddons, author of 14 popular novels, has every right to meander through 200 pages of prose and poetry extolling the lifestyle of a group of old friends known as the Scrubs. Although most of them are in helping professions, the Scrubs carry with them an air of conceit and deceit that would not entice me to join them.
Woven into Anny Butler's memoir --- which recounts the relationships among these old line Charlestonians and the "outsiders" who married in --- are haunting legends, hints of adultery, and mysterious fires and deaths that take their toll on the group, both physically and emotionally. Yet through it all, the love that they purportedly feel for one another helps them to heal their wounds and keep their traditions alive.
The action and interest pick up near the end when Gaynelle Toomer comes on the scene. She is described as a "Harley-riding librarian with boobs like the front of a '53 Studebaker." And she can cook. She answers an ad for a caregiver when Camilla, the one constant strength of the Scrubs, finally succumbs to her osteoporosis and can no longer walk or take care of her daily needs. Gaynelle also sees things about the group that those in it are oblivious to and she eventually reveals a plot twist that will surprise many and send the reader flipping back through the book for missed clues.
ISLANDS is strictly for die-hard fans of Siddons and for those who share her nostalgia for island life in South Carolina. This is not to say that mining through this mountain of verbiage won't yield a few nuggets. However, if the book had started near the middle, it would have yielded them a lot sooner.
--- Reviewed by Maggie Harding, a substance abuse counselor in Phoenix, AZ. who wanted to be Brenda Starr before life intervened. To contact Maggie, e-mail Magster2@cox.net.
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