Nora, Nora

Nora, Nora

by Anne Rivers Siddons
Nora, Nora

Nora, Nora

by Anne Rivers Siddons

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Overview

“A treat to be savored.” —Houston Chronicle

A classic from New York Times bestselling author Anne Rivers Siddons, Nora, Nora tells the story of free-thinking Cousin Nora Findlay who turns tiny Lytton, Georgia, on its ear in the summer of 1961. Pat Conroy (The Prince of Tides) says the author of Low Country, Up Island, Peachtree Street, and King’s Oak “ranks among the best of us,” and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution praises Nora, Nora as “Anne Rivers Siddons writing at the top of her form. This lively, sparkling coming-of-age novel is superbly written and wholly engaging.”


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780061750892
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: 10/13/2009
Sold by: HARPERCOLLINS
Format: eBook
Pages: 464
Sales rank: 154,042
File size: 909 KB

About the Author

About The Author

Anne Rivers Siddons is the New York Times bestselling author of 19 novels that include Nora, Nora, Sweetwater Creek, Islands, Peachtree Road, and Outer Banks. She is also the author of the nonfiction work John Chancellor Makes Me Cry.

Hometown:

Charleston, South Carolina and a summer home in Maine overlooking Penobscot Bay

Date of Birth:

January 9, 1936

Place of Birth:

Atlanta, Georgia

Education:

B.A., Auburn University, 1958; Atlanta School of Art, 1958

Read an Excerpt

Peyton McKenzie changed her name when she was six years old, on the first day of her first year in elementary school. For all her short life she had been called Prilla or sometimes Priscilla, her first name, the latter usually when she was In Trouble, but that stopped with rocklike finality when the first scabby classmate began to chant, "Prilla, Prilla, mother-killer." By the time the entire first grade in the Lytton Grammar School had taken up the refrain, Peyton McKenzie had been born, and there was no chance at all that she would return to the womb.

"It's a man's name, for heaven's sake, Priscilla," her Aunt Augusta said in exasperation for the fourth or fifth time, after Peyton's father had given up on her. "What's wrong with 'Priscilla'? It's a lovely name. Generations of your mama's family have named their daughters Priscilla. I believe the first was Priscilla Barnwell, who came over to Virginia well before the American Revolution. You should be proud."

"Peyton is my middle name," Peyton muttered. "It's as much mine as Priscilla." Both she and Augusta McKenzie knew there would be no changing of Peyton's mind, but Augusta saw it as her duty as the dominant woman in Peyton's life to do battle with the granite streak of willfulness in her niece. On the death of Peyton's mother at her birth, Frazier McKenzie had tacitly placed the day-to-day shaping and pruning of his daughter in his sister-in-law's hands. By the time of Peyton's first great rebellion, aunt and niece were old and experienced adversaries. Each knew the other's strengths and vulnerabilities. Augusta McKenzie knew full well she wasn't going to win this one. But she would never know why, because Peytonnever told anyone about the cold, whining little chant at school that morning, not until much later, and none of the other children would tell, either. Her beleaguered teacher soon forgot about the name change entirely. She was the first in a long procession of teachers to forget about Peyton McKenzie for long stretches of time.

Only Peyton remembered, each day of her life and deep in her smallest cell, that she had, indeed, killed her mother. If her father never so much as hinted to her that he held her undistinguished being responsible for the extinguishing of the radiant flame her mother had been, Peyton put it down to Frazier McKenzie's natural reticence. He had been, all her life, as politely remote as a benign godparent. He was so with everyone, except Peyton's older brother, Buddy. When Buddy died in an accident in his air-force trainer, when Peyton was five, Frazier McKenzie closed up shop on his laughter, anger, small foolishnesses, and large passions. Now, at twelve, Peyton could remember no other father than the cooled and static one she had. Her father seemed to remember her only intermittently.

She told the Losers Club about the name change on a February day when it seemed as if earth and air and sky were all made of the same sodden gray cloth. It happens sometimes in the Deep South when winter can no longer muster an honest cold but will not admit the warm tides of spring lapping at the gates. It is a climatic sulk, not a great tantrum, and like any proper sulk it can last for days and even weeks, exhausting spirits and fraying nerves and sucking open hearts with its sluggish tongue. Ernie had been so petulant that Boot had told him to shut up if he didn't have anything to add to the day's litanies of inanities and abasement. Even Boot seemed more dutiful than enthusiastic over his contribution to the club's itinerary, a lusterless account of wiping out the Canaday children's hopscotch grid with his orthotic boot.

"Well, if I couldn't do better than that, I just wouldn't say anything," Ernie sniffed, affronted. Ernie was plagued this day by demons. His small shed was so humid that the lone window was sweated over and the pages of his copy of The Inferno, laid casually with its title up on his bookcase, were glued together. His overalls stuck to him, and his thinning, spindrift hair frizzed with the damp, and he was starting a sinus infection. He had also forgotten to return his mother's library books.

"You ain't said anything," Boot pointed out. "And I jes' as soon you didn't. You as mean as an old settin' hen today. Peyton gon' have to come up with something really fine to make up for you."

Two pairs of cool eyes turned toward her. Peyton, who had planned to recount the deliberate serving to her of the last helping of tepid turnip greens in the school lunch line while a steaming pot of spaghetti and meat sauce awaited those behind her, swiftly changed her mind.

"I killed my mother," she said, her heart beating hard with the sheer daring of it, and the first opening of the pit of that old pain. The others were silent, looking at her. She looked back, feeling for an instant only the heedless joy of a great coup.

"You ain't, neither," Boot said finally.

"You flatter yourself," Ernie said.

But they knew they were bested by a long shot.

"I did, too," Peyton said. "She died not a day after I was born. She bled to death. Everybody knows that. I've always known it."

"Then why didn't you say?" Boot asked. He was having a hard time relinquishing his sultancy of humiliation.

"You'd have only said I was showing off. Ernie, you did say it. And not only did I kill her, but when I was in first grade I changed my name to Peyton because the kids were singing a song about 'Prilla, Prilla, mother-killer,' and I made it stick, too..."

Reading Group Guide

About this Book

"I set this story back in my own dreaming, small-town South, in my own time, 1961: that suspended time swung between two epochs that shaped America for good and all. I think I chose it because that turbulent transition was the greatest epiphany of my life, a crossing from the sweet, insular world I knew to another one, volatile and frightening and yet entirely necessary and right."
Raised by her emotionally distant, widowed father, and their housekeeper, Peyton McKenzie has become a shy tomboy with a terrible secret. Her only outlet is The Losers' Club, where she and her fellow outcasts top one another with their day's humiliations. Though she knows it can't go on forever, Peyton is not ready to give up her only source of friends. At the cusp of becoming a woman, young Peyton is desperate to hold onto her childhood. Her prim Aunt Augusta, however, thinks it is high time she became a proper young Southern lady, and is about to introduce Peyton to the hateful world of hair stylists and party dresses. And then Peyton's long lost cousin, Nora, blows into town driving a hot pink convertible, and proceeds to turn the sheltered world of Lytton, Georgia, on its head. The Civil Rights Movement has passed Lytton by, and Nora, fresh from a wild life on the road, is hell-bent on shaking things up. She is a blast of fresh air, revitalizing the entire McKenzie household, and captivating the young Peyton. But Nora is a dangerous role model. She, too, has a dark secret in her past. When the truth is revealed, it stuns the quiet town, and teaches Peyton the necessity, and the price, of love.

DiscussionQuestions
  1. What role does Nana play in Peyton's life? Does she have special powers, or is she simply losing her mind? What is The Sight? Why does Nana fear Nora? Is she right to do so? Does your opinion of Nana change through the course of the novel?

  2. Why do you think desegregation has passed Lytton by? How has the Civil Rights movement impacted the town? In what ways is the McKenzie household a part of the changing times, and in what ways is it still a holdover from earlier days?

  3. How would you characterize Peyton's relationship with Boot? Why do you think she never plays with him when he visits her kitchen?

  4. What does Peyton derive from her membership in The Losers' Club? Do you think the Club's practice of competing for the title of "Loser" is healthy? How does Nora's arrival in town effect the Club? What ultimately causes the Club to fall apart? When does Peyton no longer need the Club?

  5. When Peyton emerges from the bathroom stall at Rich's, having vomited all over her new dress, she encounters a malevolent stare from a black bathroom attendant. Peyton wants to shout, "This is not me; don't think I'm like this! They did this to me, but I can undo it all . . . " What does she mean by, "this is not me"? Can Peyton, "undo it all"? What does Peyton learn about? race relations from her cousin Nora?

  6. What is your first impression of Nora? Do you trust her? Does your opinion of her change through the course of the novel? How so? What sort of a role model is she for Peyton? When we first meet Nora, her voice is described as, "slow and rich as cooling fudge, with a little hill of laughter in it." Does that description make sense to you? What aspect of Nora does it capture?

  7. Peyton, her father, and Nora each have a terrible secret in their past. How does each of them cope differently? To whom do they confide? What price do they pay for keeping their secrets? What price do they pay when they are revealed? What might they have done differently?

  8. What parallels are there between Nora, Nora and Siddons's earlier novel, Peachtree Road? How is Nora like Lucy Bondurant? How is she different? How does Nora avoid Lucy's fate? In what ways does Peyton resemble Sheppard Gibbs Bondurant III? How do both novels depict the Civil Rights Movement? Why do you think Siddons chose to write a second novel about Atlanta, Georgia in the early 1960's? Do you think Siddons' attitudes have changed since she wrote Peachtree Road twelve years ago?

  9. What do you think Siddons means when she describes the time period of Nora, Nora as being, "a crossing from the sweet, insular world I knew to another one, volatile and frightening and yet entirely necessary and right"? Is she speaking of Peyton's journey, or America's? Or both?

  10. Why does Peyton replay her family's home movies when she is upset? How do they soothe her? When are the films no longer enough to comfort her?

  11. Is Frazier McKenzie a good father? In what ways does he succeed as a single parent? How does he fail? How does he change during Nora's stay? What does Nora teach him about love?

  12. How do you feel about Nora's use of foul language? Why do you think Siddons gives her such a dirty tongue? What does Nora's obscenities tell about her character? How do the residents of Lytton react to her language?

  13. What does Nana mean when she says to Peyton, "you've never been in charge of your own life. They haven't let you"? Who are "they"? Does Peyton ever take charge of her own life? If so, when?

  14. Nana predicts that Peyton posses a "power." What do you think that power is? Does Peyton ever begin to exercise her power? What are the obstacles that lie in her path?

  15. Peyton interprets the film, "On the Beach" to mean, "that everybody always loses everybody they love, but they need to do it, anyway, because . . . there isn't anything else." Does her analysis apply to her own life? To Frazier and Nora's life? How so? What is the price these three characters pay for loving?

  16. When Peyton learns the truth about her mother's life and death, what impact does it have on her? Was Nora right to tell her?

  17. How does Peyton find her voice as a writer? What are the steps that lead her to the completion of her graduation speech? What insights do we learn about Siddons through watching her character discover the joys of writing? The delivery of her speech is a disaster. Do you think her failure will deter her from writing in the future? Why, or why not?

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