Sweetwater Creek - Siddons

I read "Hill Towns" by Anne Rivers Siddons years and years ago and strongly disliked it. As I recall, Siddons had some fascination with sex in that book that I just didn't take to (go figure). I picked up "Sweetwater Creek" at the library last week, thinking I would give Siddons another try. There was still some strange sexual undercurrent in this novel (perhaps Ms. Siddons has some personal therapy she's trying to work through in her writing?) but it wasn't quite as pervasive.

Sweetwater Creek is an idyllic childhood home. With a location by the water (where the dolphins return every fall) and a livelihood of breeding the best hunting spaniels around, the only thing lacking in Emily's world is the mother than ran off without explanation years before. Young Emily has made up for the loss of her mother through her close relationship with her ailing older brother. When Buddy takes his own life, Emily is left in a house of all men, with only her spaniel, Elvis as a companion.

Siddons introduces us to Lulu, a melancoly upper-class teenager in need of respite who is welcomed into the homestead by Emily's father mainly to provide the family with the necessary social connections to move into the elite social circles of Lulu's family and heritage. What we get instead is a disturbing relationship between this emotionally fragile and sexually exploitive teen and young, innocent, forgotten-about Emily. Siddons presents the friendship to the reader as a benefit to both characters for the longest time, only later revealing the truth behind Lulu's issues and the staggering impact such would have on a 12 year old girl.

This coming of age novel lacks any sense of redemption or purpose in my opinion. While the book tidies up its ending so that the reader is left to believe that Emily has found hope afterall, and that her father has, in fact, secured for her a step into the right social network, I don't think it justifies the damage already done. The hope of reconstruction in this young girl's life seems to me to lie in the endearing aunt who is pushing aside and taken for granted by the characters in the novel, and even upon her re-entry into the family unit, it seems that her influence is greatly undervalued.

For the second time, I was unimpressed by Siddons. This novel could have made the same points without any sexual perversion whatsoever. Perhaps it is as a mother that I most strongly reject this novel, hoping that as parents we would be more protective of our families.