Heartbreak Hotel (Siddons)
Summary | Author | Book Reviews | Discussion Questions
Heartbreak Hotel
Anne Rivers Siddons, 1976
Simon & Schuster
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781416544906
In Brief
Maggie Deloach has everything going for her. She's one of the most popular girls on Randolph University's campus, beloved of the faculty and the student body. She belongs to the best sorority and is pinned to the most eligible fraternity boy, Boots Claibornes. From an impeccable lineage, Maggie was brought up to behave like a perfect Southern belle. Maggie knows the rules and is willing to play by them, which all but guarantees her a future of smooth sailing, with no surprises, and no disappointments.
But this is Alabama, in the summer of 1956, and the world is about to be rocked by the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. Maggie runs into a young newspaper reporter, Hoyt Cunningham, who begins to open her eyes to the momentous societal changes that are happening all around her. Responding to her obvious intelligence, Hoyt challenges her to become a part of the veritable revolution that is sweeping the nation. A visit to the Claiborne family estate in the delta brings Maggie face to face with the cruel injustices of segregation and racism.
Her newly-awakened moral indignation drives her to write an incendiary article in Randolph's college newspaper that forever changes the way people think of Maggie, and how she thinks of herself. As the nation rocks to Elvis Presley tunes and the winds of change blow across the South, Maggie is launched onto a wrenching journey of self-discovery that threatens to shatter her whole world. (From the publisher.)
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About the Author
• Birth—January 9, 1936
• Where—Atlanta, Georgia, USA
• Education—B.A., Auburn University; Atlanta School of Art
• Currently—lives in Charleston, South Carolina and Maine
Born in 1936 in a small town near Atlanta, Anne Rivers Siddons was raised to be a dutiful daughter of the South — popular, well-mannered, studious, and observant of all the cultural mores of time and place. She attended Alabama's Auburn University in the mid-1950s, just as the Civil Rights Movement was gathering steam. Siddons worked on the staff of Auburn's student newspaper and wrote an editorial in favor of integration. When the administration asked her to pull the piece, she refused. The column ran with an official disclaimer from the university, attracting national attention and giving young Siddons her first taste of the power of the written word.
After a brief stint in the advertising department of a bank, Siddons took a position with the up and coming regional magazine Atlanta, where she worked her way up to senior editor. Impressed by her writing ability, an editor at Doubleday offered her a two-book contract. She debuted in 1975 with a collection of nonfiction essays; the following year, she published Heartbreak Hotel, a semi-autobiographical novel about a privileged Southern coed who comes of age during the summer of 1956.
With the notable exception of 1978's The House Next Door, a chilling contemporary gothic compared by Stephen King to Shirley Jackson's classic horror novel The Haunting of Hill House, Siddons has produced a string of well-written, imaginative, and emotionally resonant stories of love and loss —all firmly rooted in the culture of the modern South. Her books are consistent bestsellers, with 1988's Peachtree Road (1988) arguably her biggest commercial success. Described by her friend and peer, Pat Conroy, as "the Southern novel for our generation," the book sheds illuminating light on the changing landscape of mid-20th-century Atlanta society.
Although her status as a "regional" writer accounts partially for Siddons' appeal, ultimately fans love her books because they portray with compassion and truth the real lives of women who transcend the difficulties of love and marriage, family, friendship, and growing up.
Extras
• Although she is often compared with another Atlanta author, Margaret Mitchel, Siddons insists that the South she writes about is not the romanticized version found in Gone With the Wind. Instead, her relationship with the region is loving, but realistic. "It's like an old marriage or a long marriage. The commitment is absolute, but the romance has long since worn off...I want to write about it as it really is: I don't want to romanticize it."
• Siddons' debut novel Heartberak Hotel was turned into the 1989 movie Heart of Dixie, starry Ally Sheedy, Virginia Madsen, and Phoebe Cates. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Critics Say . . .
Elvis Presley's song was all the rage in 1956 when Maggie Deloach, Alabama belle, has to choose between a Delta plantation beau and an activist reporter. Anne Rivers Siddon dissects the period with a precision that's anything but nostalgic, yet makes her novel a good-natured rather than angry look backward.
New York Times
The year is 1956. Eisenhower is president, the United States is prosperous, and Elvis is King. Underneath this happy era of relative peace are the powder kegs of the Civil and Women's Rights movements. Maggie Deloach is a senior at a small Southern college. She is a golden girl, active in sorority and campus functions, and attached to Boots Claiborne, a rich fellow whom she is expected to marry. She is on the path to being the perfect Southern matron. However, a series of events shatter Maggie's perfect world and make her aware of the storm lurking beneath the calm of the times. Though painfully slow in starting, listeners will enjoy this tale of a young woman who realizes that she is not happy with the life she is expected to lead. For most collections. —Danna C. Bell-Russel, Marymount Univ. Lib. , Arlington, VA
Library Journal
Book Club Discussion Questions
1. Maggie says of the imprisoned black man, "he was something in a trap and he couldn't get out, and he hated the people who'd trapped him, but at the same time he'd do anything on earth they wanted him to,just so they didn't punish him. And I recognized that, I knew what he was feeling, I understood that." What does she mean? What does her initial empathy for the black man lead her to conclude about her own life? How does she succeed in getting out of the "trap" for herself?
2. What role does Aiken play in Maggie's life? How does Maggie's impression of Aiken change through the course of the novel? What are the different types of friendships Maggie has with other women? Which proves to be the most instrumental in her life, and why?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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