Headstrong, independent, and devastatingly beautiful Lucy Bondurant Chastain Venable will never become the demure Southern lady her family requires—while her older cousin, Sheppard Gibbs Bondurant III, is too shy and bookish, a far cry from the suave, gregarious Southern gentleman he's expected to be. In the Bondurants' sprawling home on Atlanta's Peachtree Road, these two will be united by a fierce tainted love—and torn apart by a smoldering rage fanned by the cruelty of years and the unbending demands of privilege.

A masterful tale of love, hate, and rebellion set in an elite world of class and wealth, New York Times bestselling author Anne Rivers Siddons's Peachtree Road is the unforgettable story of the turbulent growth of a great Southern city and of two people cursed by blood and birth.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Read only if you have a lot of time to waste
Comment: This book had so much potential but it's almost confusing the way it spends more time forshadowing than telling the story. I'm about half-way through it and feel, only because of my OCD tendacies, I will continue to muddle through it.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Reissuance of a classic, now in paperback
Comment: Peachtree Road is brilliant. With all that that implies. It glitters. It's sharp, blinding, radiant, and dazzling. Pointed and poignant. Siddons has constructed a careful chronicling of the evolution of Atlanta into a desegregated and diverse Sunbelt megalopolis, contrasting it with the devolution of the Bondurants, a Southern family. Dysfunctional doesn't begin to cover them.

Shep Bondurant has loved his beautiful cousin Lucy since childhood. And hated her. Shep's uncle abandoned his family so Lucy's mother turns up on the Bondurant front porch with her three children. Lucy is the only child old enough to remember her father and she is devastated by his defection. Unloved by her aspiring society mother and barely tolerated by Shep's parents, Lucy forges a lifelong bond with her cousin Shep.

Lucy needs him as Shep needs to be needed by her. Lucy's descent threatens to drag Shep with her, but he manages to build his own life in the shadow of his family and their legacy. Lucy ruins his every chance at happiness, yet he continues to forgive and save her. They dance together all their lives, occasionally pulling away for periods but always coming together again.

Siddons's prose is beautiful and provocative. Her allusions sparkle and dance on the page. Some readers will find Peachtree Road inflated and a little self-indulgent. Readers who want a story to move will be bored and skim. Others will delight in savoring the descriptions.

Fans will love this reissue of her classic novel, first published in 1988. Shep and Lucy burrow under your skin and take up residence long after the end of the book. Readers will appreciate the mass market paperback. A tome of 797 pages is much easier to carry around than a hardback the same size.

Armchair Interviews says: Peachtree Road is not for everyone, but those who get it, will love it.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Slow start but builds to an exciting read,
Comment: This was the only Anne Rivers Siddons book I have read with a slow start. But, it eventually builds the tension level, and I was hooked. Ms. Siddons is quite adept at descriptions of southern locales, and she describes Atlanta in that time beautifully. Gibby, the narrator, wasn't always a hero just like the rest of us, but the main woman,(whose name I can't remember), needed to disappear about half way through the book. She became excessively tiresome.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Flawless
Comment: What a wonderfully written book.I still can't help thinking of this great read.If you want a great book,this is it!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: fascinating but flawed
Comment: The glimpse into a life that few of us understand was enthralling, but after awhile I couldn't care less about the characters. I finished it because I was hoping they would somehow redeem themselves. In Siddon's other stories her characters are deeply flawed but somehow we see why they are, and what they can't overcome. Here these folks have it all and still can't be decent human beings. I really had no sympathy for the moral lethargy of all of them.

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