Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Search - Colony

Colony
Colony
Author: Anne Rivers Siddons
When Maude Chambliss first arrives at Retreat, the seasonal home of her husband's aristocratic family, she is a nineteen-year-old bride fresh from South Carolina's Low Country. Among the patrician men and women who reside in the summer colony on the coast of Maine, her gypsy-like beauty and impulsive behavior immediately brand her an outsider. S...  more »
ISBN-13: 9780060590390
ISBN-10: 0060590394
Publication Date: 4/1/2004
Rating:
  • Currently 3.7/5 Stars.
 9

3.7 stars, based on 9 ratings
Publisher: HarperAudio
Book Type: Audio Cassette
Other Versions: Paperback, Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

Top Member Book Reviews

reviewed Colony on + 33 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 6
My Amazon review - I just reread this book for the first time since it was published in 1992. In the decade since I first devoured this 600+ page novel in one weekend I have become a wife, a daughter-in-law and a mother, so those relationships in this story now have an even deeper meaning to me. I don't think I can express strongly enough how thoroughly I was pulled into this tale, caught up in the weave of Siddons masterful storytelling and reluctant to extract myself at the end. I cried for these characters, laughed with them, hated some of them as passionately as I loved others, and finally thanked God that I am not, and never will be, anything like them. Siddons has created a world that I fervently hope has no equal in reality, as the thought of the extremes encountered in good and evil in this tale coexisting in one place, in one lifetime, is almost too much to bear. This is an enchanting story that may put you through the wringer, but it is so very worth it.
reviewed Colony on + 43 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
If it's gothic, Siddons (Outer Banks, King's Oak, etc.) can do it, or so it would appear in this latest novel destined for commercial success. In it, she takes her gifts for melodrama and tangling family trees up north, to a summer colony for Boston Brahmins on the coast of Maine, called simply ``Retreat.'' But Siddons's heroine is a southerner, and on her she demonstrates one of her best tricks--her deep intimacy with her leading ladies, which the author shares with her readers from the get-go. Anyway, it isn't easy for sweet young Maude Gascoigne, from a moldering plantation near Charleston, to fit in when her new husband, sterling-silver Peter Chambliss (of a Boston banking family, Princeton, and Retreat), takes her to the summer place. For the first few decades Maude battles it out with her insufferable, hypercritical mother-in-law, the drunken and lecherous husband of her best friend, Amy Potter, and even Peter himself--a depressive, hermetic man who just sails away whenever things get rough. Gradually, though, little Maudie gets some starch and learns to endure almost anything, including: the death of her mother-in-law (``my beloved enemy''); Peter's weird coldness to his own two children, which ultimately sends the younger, Happy, to a sanitarium; the death of a grandson; the return of a bad seed, Elizabeth, Amy Potter's girl, who does her best to break up Maude's son's marriage; and whispers that float on the salt spray every summer about how much Elizabeth looks like Peter. Well, it turns out that Elizabeth's connection to Peter is very much an issue--but we're not telling why. Long-suffering Maude may not be everyone's cup of tea, but this time Siddons gets the melodrama balance just right and shows she's as much at home in Maine as she was in Georgia. Fans will be doing cartwheels, and others will queue up.
reviewed Colony on + 74 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
Another one of Anne Rivers Siddons wonderful, complicated, emotional stories. I could not put it down.
reviewed Colony on + 30 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
There are beach reads and then there are great beach reads. This one is a great beach read. Not necessarily great literature but a very good story.
Read All 51 Book Reviews of "Colony"

Please Log in to Rate these Book Reviews

reviewed Colony on + 22 more book reviews
This three hour audio is another one of Siddons' great stories. Maude Chambliss learns the "rules" from her mother-in-law Hannah of how to keep alive the spirit of past generations in this beloved summer retreat.
reviewed Colony on
Ok, I don't exactly get the connection between why Peter was so attentive to Elizabeth and the fact that she looked like him. If he was the father of Elizabeth's baby that died, he couldn't have also been her father, right? There was never anything about his relationship with Elizabeth's mother. Please explain.Thank you.
reviewed Colony on + 128 more book reviews
From the back:
A wonderful saga....If you want to sink into a novel and be entirely enveloped by it, this is the one. Siddons has captured the richness and complications of female friendships in a way few writers have done.
reviewed Colony on
This is the story of Maude, a new bride from South Carolina whose new husband is from an old, aristocratic Maine family and spans many years. It is an outstanding novel -- one of Anne Rivers Siddons best!
reviewed Colony on
Fantastic beach book--epic story running through multiple family generations, totally fun.
reviewed Colony on + 4 more book reviews
Good summer read.
reviewed Colony on + 46 more book reviews
This is, by far, the best Siddons book that I have read - so much so that I read it twice, all 600 pages of it. It truly is an unforgettable story of love, acceptance and tradition.


Genres: