Up Island

Up Island chronicles the mass redemption of a unlikely group, thrown together by the vicissitudes of love and fate: "a six foot Southern Betrayed Wife and her widowed father and a senile old Portuguese lesbian and a one-legged schoolteacher and a mongrel dog and two aberrant swans..." As the novel begins, newly divorced Molly Redwine is in the market for some redemption. Battered and numb from loss, she comes to Martha's Vineyard to escape and heal if she can. For the next 300 pages, the story shuttles between Molly's heart, packed with pain, regret, and guilt, and the sea-licked open spaces of the island. By book's end, both places are terra cognita. There are family secrets, haunted dreams, and enough death to do Shakespeare proud--balanced delicately with small pleasures, kindness, and unbreakable bonds. Up Island is a fractal of a book: complicated but ultimately satisfying as only the completion of a pattern can be. Intelligent and insightful, it is good story tenderly told. From School Library Journal YA. For Molly Redwine, maintaining her family is the essence of her existence. When her husband announces he is leaving her for another woman, her world collapses. The "other woman" quickly takes over Molly's social position, her house, and even the affection of her son. With the sudden death of her domineering mother, Molly is truly set adrift. Escaping with friends to Martha's Vineyard, she starts the search for her own identity. When her friends depart, she stays on in a small cottage. As a renter, she must also assume the duties of caretaker of two cantankerous old women who share a haunting secret, a gravely ill and estranged son of one of those women, and two territorial swans. Through the winter, Molly struggles to nurture them as she searches for a future for herself. As with most of Siddons's heroines, Molly is an engaging woman who battles successfully with adversity and remains unsinkable. The author's fans will be delighted with her latest novel and its setting.?Katherine Fitch, Lake Braddock Middle School, Burke, VACopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal A woman whose family has fallen apart finds refuge on Martha's Vineyard, caring for others as a means of finding herself.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist Following her resoundingly successful Fault Lines (1995), Siddons now introduces Molly Bell Redwine, the statuesque wife of an Atlanta blue blood. This story is a quest for family; her whole life, Molly, now a happy wife and mother in the wealthy Atlanta suburbs, has defined her universe by what she perceives to be her role in the family. Molly's world begins its descent upon learning that her husband not only has a mistress but also has plans to marry the younger woman. Her mother's sudden death only makes her ground shakier. Thus, without realizing it, Molly begins a journey to find a new family. She decides to stay on at Martha's Vineyard after visiting her friend there, and she proceeds to play familiar roles with new people. Siddons has always had a certain knack for weaving lyrical phrases and conveying a mood through her prose; her portrayal of the woman scorned is particularly poignant and insightful, as is her depiction of complex family dynamics. But the story gets frustrating because the reader wants everything to be right for Molly, and that certainly doesn't always happen. Sure there is some sort of resolution at the end, but it is a disjointed and odd conclusion. However, given the 250,000-copy first printing and aggressive marketing, this novel is sure to find its fans. Mary Frances Wilkens From Kirkus Reviews Siddons has her formula down to a science (Fault Lines, 1995, etc.), as this latest once again demonstrates. Molly Bell Redwine is a woman who's never had a chance to discover herself. As a child, she lived under the shadow of her glamorous mother. As a young adult, she met and married Tee, a Coca-Cola executive who fathered her two children, Teddy and Caroline, and kept her comfortable in the manner to which she'd become accustomed. When Tee announces out of the blue that he's met a younger woman, a Coke attorney, and wants a divorce, and Molly's mother up and dies without any notice, Molly's stable if painfully dull Atlanta existence is thrown into disarray. On the advice of her transplanted northern friend Liv, she heads to Liv's house in Martha's Vineyard for the rest of the summer, and to everyone's surprise decides to stay once Liv heads back south at the end of the season. On the island, Molly finds herself in an unusual position as house-sitter, nurse, and friend to two elderly, ill women, and as part-time caretaker to one of the women's sons, who's suffering from cancer and has recently had his leg amputated. On top of it all, Molly's depressed, mourning father joins her, hoping to find solace in this place where he and his daughter are anonymous. But as is often the case--at least in a good Siddons novel--alone doesn't last for long, and love comes when it's least expected. What has seemed at first an unbearable burden transforms Molly in ways she couldn't have imagined. Far-fetched but oddly compelling, this beaten-down housewife's journey to self-reliance and happiness has surprising quirks, lively characters, and actual feeling. (First printing of 250,000; Literary Guild selection; $200,000 ad/promo; author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Anne Rivers Siddons's bestselling novels include Nora, Nora ; Sweetwater Creek ; Islands ; and Fox's Earth . She is also the author of the nonfiction work John Chancellor Makes Me Cry . She and her husband divide their time between Charleston, South Carolina, and Brooklin, Maine. Read more