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Anne Rivers Siddons

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Downtown Mass Market Paperback – May 24, 1995

by Anne Rivers Siddons (Author)

4.2 601 ratings

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Arriving in a city that is torn apart by the civil rights crusades of the sixties, Smoky O'Donnell begins her job as a writer with Atlanta's Downtown magazine and meets three young men that change her life. Reprint.

Print length

512 pages
Language

English
Publisher

HarperTorch
Publication date

May 24, 1995
Dimensions

4.19 x 1.02 x 6.75 inches
ISBN-10

0061099686
ISBN-13

978-0061099687
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Anne Rivers Siddons is the New York Times bestselling author of 19 novels that include Nora, Nora, Sweetwater Creek, Islands, Peachtree Road, and Outer Banks. She is also the author of the nonfiction work John Chancellor Makes Me Cry.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ HarperTorch; Reprint edition (May 24, 1995)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Mass Market Paperback ‏ : ‎ 512 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0061099686
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0061099687
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.19 x 1.02 x 6.75 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,363,439 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,834 in Christian Dating & Relationships (Books)
- #11,736 in Christian Women's Issues
- #239,480 in Contemporary Romance (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.2 601 ratings

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Anne Rivers Siddons

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Anne Rivers Siddons (born January 9, 1936) is an American novelist who writes stories set in the southern United States.

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Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5

601 global ratings

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Russell J. Sanders

Beautifully written!

Reviewed in the United States on August 11, 2023

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Anne Rivers Siddons is a fine, fine writer. I’m surprised she has not been lauded as one of our finest Southern writers. Or perhaps she has, and I’ve missed it. Anyway, Downtown, a novel she wrote in the 1990s, is one of the best of her books that I have read. Set against the backdrop of the late 1960s, Siddons weaves a tale of a young writer who obtains a job at Downtown Magazine, an Atlanta city magazine. Surrounding her are several colorful characters, all beautifully fleshed out by Siddons. The plot is infused with echoes of the Civil Rights Movement, the emerging gay rights movement, the burgeoning women’s rights movement, and the friendships that can be built among diverse young people. This all makes for a compelling story. Siddons also paints beautiful word pictures as she describes the physical world that surrounds her characters. My one complaint is her epilogue. Taking place many years after the events of the novel, Siddons is focused on our being surprised when she reveals the identity of the protagonist’s husband. Since who she reveals is pretty much expected, the constant use of “my husband” to keep from saying his name until the final page or so is very annoying indeed. But that’s a minor gripe after having reveled in the story Siddons has told so beautifully.

Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2014

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Siddons' characters are as real and familiar as people you know. She paints her Southern settings so colorfully that you could swear you've been there. Downtown is perfect for "boomers" like me who were starting out in the South in the sixties. It's a history lesson with a personal perspective that makes the predictability forgivable and the final twist really satisfying.

Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2017

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Downtown is, yet again, another Anne Rivers Siddons classic. In my mind, she's incapable of writing anything less. Masterfully and vividly set in mid-nineties sixties Atlanta, Siddons parallels the rise of the Southern city as it grows into its own through turbulent times, with the budding career of new arrival, journalist Smoky O'Donnell, who hails from an insular, Catholic community, among the Irish working-class of Corkie, which rests along the waterfront of Savannah, Georgia. Smoky is twenty seven, wide-eyed and bursting at the seams to join the vibrant world beyond her hometown, and when she fortuitously lands a job in Atlanta, at Downtown Magazine, her life finally shifts into gear. It is a swift and fascinating evolution replete with sixties music, miniskirts, free love, and social unrest. Smoky's position with Downtown Magazine places her at the core of it all, working beside an eccentric boss and a group of creatives who come to be her city family. Through the eyes of a reporter, the reader learns about upper-crust, Atlanta society as well as its desperate underbelly. Amongst roiling tides, the civil rights movement is seen up close and at first hand. In language both personal and confessional, Smoky tells her version of a life on the rise, in a town that shapes destinies, in a voice sympathetic to all sides of the changing times. This is a book to educate anyone not living in the pivotal sixties of America. That it is set in the South gives the reader a particular, advantageous spin from a very critical vantage point. It portrays a search for identity, a search for purpose, new love, and the shaping of a young woman from innocence into the life-altering placement of a sustained open mind.

3 people found this helpful

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M. C. Williams

WARNING: the Audiobook is ABRIDGED!

Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2023

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I love this book and am rereading it. Unfortunately the Audiobook is abridged, but the Amazon description fails to mention this. I am very unhappy but there is no way to return it.

2 people found this helpful

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SMG

Not as good as other Anne Rivers Siddon's books

Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2014

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This book was just okay. It was intriguing but very odd and there were many paths the book went down that in mind were left hanging. I typically love all of her books, but this one is not my favorite.

One person found this helpful

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Helen Hogan

Siddons Shows us 1960's Atlanta

Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2014

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Siddons is one of my favorite mainstream authors, but this is not my favorite book of hers. I am a little suspicious of characters who are writers. Smokey O'Donnel brings the naivete of a determined girl from a poor family to observe the fast pace of Atlanta in the sixties while writing for Atlanta's city magazine DOWNTOWN . Characters around her are interesting if slightly exaggerated. Smokey starts out as a typical romance heroine when she gets engaged to the son of old money Brad Hunter. But she shows her spirit writing articles depicting the struggles of Atlanta's Negroes. Her angry reaction when Brad refuses to understand her work begins her independence. She learns to love Lucas, the cameraman for the civil rights articles whose wild sense of humor and addictions to action mask deep goodness. Editor Matt Comfort, small of stature, looms larger than life as mentor, prankster, and hard drinking jovial host. When Matt returns from a binge to inspire everyone at the magazine to slave over a presentation for a prospective buyer he will find to save them from ruin, readers breathe a sigh of relief. His drunken collapse in front of the "chicken king" brings a terrible sense of letdown for readers as well as the writers. Siddons never fails to entertain, but to me, STILLWATER CREEK about the girl who trained the family's Boykin spaniels to be great bird dogs is more fun.

2 people found this helpful

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Savvyreader

Nostalgic

Reviewed in the United States on November 7, 2021

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A look back, Atlanta as it was in the late 60's, before America lost MLK and Bobby..
Well worth the reread.

Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2023

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I have read most of Anne Rivers Siddons' books and fully enjoyed them, but Downtown is my favorite one. She totally recreates the 60s in Atlanta. It was a time like no other and she does a great job of winding a good story around it.

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