Down Town

by Anne Rivers Siddons

The year is 1966, a time of innocence, possibility,and freedom. And for Atlanta, the country, and one woman making her way in a changing world, nothing will be the same . . .After an airless childhood in Savannah, Smoky O'Donnell arrives in Atlanta, dazzled and chastened by this hectic young city on the rise. Her new job as a writer with the city's Downtown magazine introduces her to many unforgettable people and propels her into the center of momentous events that will irrevocably alter her heart, her career, and her world.

Genres: Fiction, Southern, Chick Lit, Historical Fiction, Romance, Contemporary, Womens Fiction

512 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1994

About the author

Born Sybil Anne Rivers in Atlanta, Georgia, she was raised in Fairburn, Georgia, and attended Auburn University, where she was a member of the Delta Delta Delta Sorority.

While at Auburn she wrote a column for the student newspaper, The Auburn Plainsman, that favored integration. The university administration attempted to suppress the column, and ultimately fired her, and the column garnered national attention. She later became a senior editor for Atlanta magazine.

At the age of thirty she married Heyward Siddons, and she and her husband lived in Charleston, South Carolina, and spent summers in Maine. Siddons died of lung cancer on September 11, 2019

Reviews

[TraceyL · Rating 3 out of 5]

A young Irish Catholic woman moves from Savannah to Atlanta in 1966. She takes a job at a newspaper writing about issues in Atlanta's black community. The book is about the various cultural changes that happened in the 60's, while also being a coming-of-age story and romance.

I picked this up because it fit a task for a reading challenge, and didn't expect to like it very much, but I did.

[Virginia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a rabid fan of Anne Rivers Siddons, but I somehow never read Downtown. If I read it before, I recalled none of it. If I had I read it before I read Colony, I many never have read another book by this author.

There are moments in this novel that are so wonderful, but they are few. As always, the language is beautiful and intoxicating, but the story, for me, falls flat. It feels forced and contrived. It seems that Ms. Siddons was not the right person to tell this story of Atlanta in the late 1960's as the attention on the civil rights movement was giving way to the Vietnam War.

This novel tells the story of the year or so that Smoky O'Donnell lived in Atlanta and worked for the magazine, Downtown. Its publisher, Matt Comfort, expects everyone to do his bidding. No one is, really, to have any other life, but the one that they give to his magazine. Over the course of the year, Smoky changes from a naive Irish lass into a tough believer in the rights movement, but it feels, as I said, forced. Eventually, Matt self-destructs and takes Downtown down with him.

As I said, there are beautiful moments. I loved the battle between Matt and the magazine's owner over coffee cups. The descriptions of Atlanta, both the beautiful and the ugly were lovely, but instead of reading this book in just a matter of two or three days as I usually do with a Siddons' novel, this book took me more than a week. And that is saying a lot.

And if I read the words to the song, Downtown, one more time, I think I wood have screamed. The author milked that cliche a few too many times.

[Kellie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the excitement Smoky felt about her first real job and the glamour of Atlanta at the beginning of this book. I could relate. I remember my first “real” job and how exciting it was to work “downtown”. And that song played through my head as I read the book. Siddons has been known to add a dark side to her novels, however, this one did not have it. It is an early work. Siddons sometimes gets a little too wordy and this was no exception. So, I just skimmed through some of the detail. I think this was an exceptional work by Siddons. I felt like I went back in time and was right in the middle of the hoppin’ southern city of Atlanta. She did a fantastic job describing what was happening at this time during the 60’s. I was fascinated. The story was about Smoky. She gets a job in Atlanta working for a magazine called “Downtown”. She is an Irish Catholic girl who was brought up with the strict rules of the Catholic Church. Her life is ahead and at first she is controlled by her upbringing. But the changing times of the 60’s seem to change her and the life she is excited about living. And the magazine is a part of the change. She is right in the middle of Atlanta during one of the most radical times of the century. I remember reading some of this author’s earlier works and fell in love with them. This was another great one with a somewhat surprising ending. I highly recommend this author!

[Kerry Hennigan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-visiting “Downtown” after many years reminds me, as if I need reminding, just how good a writer Anne Rivers Siddons is. This 1994 novel is her towering tribute to the city of Atlanta, to its famous city magazine and the editor and staff that made it landmark publication of the turbulent 60s in the South.

“Downtown” is fiction though, as is the magazine of the same name, its editor and staff, and her female protagonist, “Smoky” O’Donnell from Savannah. Smoky escapes the Irish enclave of her home town to venture to Atlanta in her mid-twenties, excited at the opportunity to become one of legendary editor Matt Comfort’s “people”.

It is the people, experienced through Smoky’s eyes, that make this novel so special – along with its wonderful recreation of a special place and pivotal time in 2Oth century history. The Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War are polarizing opinions all over the country – to read “Downtown” is to relive those times through the lens of the writers and photographers who recorded them.

This is such a satisfying book, one of Siddon’s very best – and she’s written some great ones.

Kerry Heningan
7 April 2018

[S · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finished a few days ago.
Seemed mostly an exercise in self indulgence.
Much about what a special group of people, working for a city magazine, they were..but nothing to really make the reader feel it and agree.
Much about what an important time it was, and feeling so connected to ‘the movement’..but again no real depth in it.
It was like a lot (huge lot) of self indulgent surface chatter, with no meat behind it.

[Julay · Rating 1 out of 5]

Quel ennui ! J'ai rarement mis aussi longtemps à lire un si petit livre.
La période des années soixante aux Etats-Unis est l'une des périodes les plus riches de son Histoire. L'auteure à réussi à mettre tous les événements des sixties au dernier plan pour raconter les amours ratées d'une jeune femme complètement débile. Elle est d'une naïveté insupportable, passe son temps à pleurer, ne comprend rien à la vie, et est inconstante au possible. Je ne comprends pas non plus l'obsession de l'auteure, une femme pourtant, à décrire les "mini-jupes" et les robes qui "remontent très haut sur les cuisses" de tous ses personnages féminins, à peu près toutes les deux pages... Je ne parle même pas de la misogynie ambiante, époque oblige certes, mais l'auteure elle même semble avoir une vision extrêmement dégradante de la femme de manière générale. Non, ça ne fait rire aucune femme, qu'un photographe se trimballe dans les bureaux du journal ou elles travaillent pour prendre des photos de leur culotte quand elles passent à proximité en "mini-jupe". Désolée, mais c'est trop.

[Tessa Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story that kept you on your toes from start to finish.

[Mitzi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Downtown by Anne Rivers Siddons was our book club selection for March. Through the eyes of a young reporter, we get a peak into life in Atlanta during the turbulent 60s. It was fun to go back and read this author again.

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

In the late fall of 1966, Smoky O’Donnell moves from her tight knit Irish Catholic community in Savannah to the big city of Atlanta to take a job as senior editor of Atlanta magazine. She soon meets wealthy Brad Hunt who wants to marry her and keep her out of harm’s way. At the same time she takes some assignments in sketchier neighborhoods accompanied by photographer, Luke Geary. I gave this only two stars because Smoky seemed a little too naive and her romance with Brad had no spark.

[Judy Zell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of nostalgia for those of us who went to college in the 60's. Women trying to get established in journalism, almost like Mary Tyler Moore's show. Good info about the civil rights movement, but unfortunately, the story ends the day before Martin Luther King's assassination. Most of the romantic pairings didn't make much sense to me, either.

[April · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I first started reading Anne Rivers Siddons (a long time ago) this book stood out as my very favorite! The central character is wonderful! It is her "coming of age" story and I found it to be lovely and heartwarming.

[Katie Hilton · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a fairly good Siddons, apparently loosely based on her experiences with Atlanta magazine in the late '60s. It is somewhat sappy, though, and the ending is odd. If you're a fan, you should read it; otherwise, move on.

[Jeanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just couldn't get into this book. Set in Atlanta in the 1960's, it tries to portray the time. Guess it just differs from how I saw the 1960's.

[Susan Schuchard · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars.

[Claire Fullerton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Downtown is, yet again, another Anne Rivers Siddons classic. In my mind, she's incapable of writing anything less. Masterfully and vividly set in mid-nineties sixties Atlanta, Siddons parallels the rise of the Southern city as it grows into its own through turbulent times, with the budding career of new arrival, journalist Smoky O'Donnell, who hails from an insular, Catholic community, among the Irish working-class of Corkie, which rests along the waterfront of Savannah, Georgia. Smoky is twenty seven, wide-eyed and bursting at the seams to join the vibrant world beyond her hometown, and when she fortuitously lands a job in Atlanta, at Downtown Magazine, her life finally shifts into gear. It is a swift and fascinating evolution replete with sixties music, miniskirts, free love, and social unrest. Smoky's position with Downtown Magazine places her at the core of it all, working beside an eccentric boss and a group of creatives who come to be her city family. Through the eyes of a reporter, the reader learns about upper-crust, Atlanta society as well as its desperate underbelly. Amongst roiling tides, the civil rights movement is seen up close and at first hand. In language both personal and confessional, Smoky tells her version of a life on the rise, in a town that shapes destinies, in a voice sympathetic to all sides of the changing times. This is a book to educate anyone not living in the pivotal sixties of America. That it is set in the South gives the reader a particular, advantageous spin from a very critical vantage point. It portrays a search for identity, a search for purpose, new love, and the shaping of a young woman from innocence into the life-altering placement of a sustained open mind.

[bob walenski · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel started slowly, but grew on me, and was most insightful by the conclusion. What started as a piece of fluff novel about a young girl starting her journalism career, also described perfectly the early days of the Civil Rights Movement as it changed and the turbulence of an entire decade of social change swept the nation. Soon all the figures at the magazine were engaged in more and more important issues as events changed.

The story was set in 1966-69 Atlanta at a new start up magazine publication. It's an intimate character study of two the main protagonists, Smokey O'Donnell and Matthew Comfort: Smokey a young developing writer and Matt the editor and prime mover of the magazine "Downtown". Using Pet Clark's iconic song as an ongoing metaphor, the characters became more affected by national events. At times the novel took on a flirty " Mary Tyler Moore goes to Atlanta" vibe which hurt the historical gravitas of the events. There were love affairs, drinking and partying and additional characters: photographers, business tycoons, Atlanta socialites etc.

It wasn't until the Epilogue that the characters themselves saw the deeper more subtle meanings of what they lived through. Maybe that was Anne Rivers Siddons point, we can't always know the final or overall importance of events in our lives until we emerge from them as we grow, change and age. It's hard to see the forest through the trees as we live day by day. I think the book flirted with truly profound realizations....they just took some added reflection to find.

[Vicki Jaeger · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read this several times, but apparently this is the first time while using Goodreads.
A couple of quotes I loved:
"But Ireland will not, finally, let her sons go, and the dark need to argue and shout and rage in the name of injustice, real or imagined, came crawling out of the core of Lia O'Donnell like a tapeworm."

"I remember it chiefly as a string of vignettes: a small, secret cove in green-black pines that tom Gordon knew about, where we dropped anchor and plunged, one after another, into water so clear and cold in its depths that it was like swimming in ginger ale, trailing bubbles; lying on the deck as supine as a beached fish, stunned with sun and beer, feeling the boat rock under me as it bobbed at its anchor and seeing only the red of the sun through my closed eyelids, listening to the drumbeat of the music, sun-weight as heavy as another body on every inch of my skin; eating prodigiously and choking with laughter and something Matt and Hand had going; swimming again, this time in a satiny wrapping of alcohol and too much sun, going far down in the silent green underwater and thinking that if I wanted, I never had to come up; coming out of the water, finally, with the sting gone out of the sun and the light turning, for the first time that year, to the thick gold of the coming autumn, and twilight drawing on, pulling on Luke Geary's sweatshirt against the first chill of the evening."

[Ginny Thurston · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really related personally to this book. My first job out of college was in Atlanta in 1973... I even did a summer internship at the Constitution and Georgia State, so I knew the excitement of the specific places and the thrills and chills of being on your own for the first time. My mother was a journalist, so I related to that. The Vietnam Nam War was over by then and Civil Rights bill had been passed, but I knew those struggles from high school. I liked the complexity of the characters and the way Siddons peeled back the layers of the Atlanta culture. Like Smoky, Atlanta seems so overwhelming today...not the relatable place that I remember so fondly. I loved the song Downtown by Petula Clark when I was in 7th grade, but I think that motif went a bit too far...it got stuck in my head!

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I read this book about six times as a teenager. I was obsessed with the 60s and wanted to be just like Smokey. So, this was a grown-up re-read for me and, I have to say, it held up. Knowing the story by heart meant I could skim some of the details, but I still felt immersed in the setting, as well as the atmosphere around Downtown Magazine and "Comfort's People." Though, now that I'm an adult, I'm less tolerant of Matt Comfort and his drinking and sexism. Anyway, this book remains one of my favorites.

[Rita · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maureen O'Donnell is known by her family and friends as Smoky. Smoky can't wait to spread her wings and leave her hometown behind. Atlanta is where she is headed and she amazed by all of the different sights and sounds she is experiencing on her arrival. The time is placed in the mid 1960's and for Smoky it's a time where she enters a world that she hasn't experienced before. Smoky is ready to throw herself right into being part of recording and writing about the social and political landscape. This book is about a very sheltered Irish Catholic young lady and her experiences.

[Jamila Danhassan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Moving from Corkie County, Savannah to Atlanta, Smoky O'Donnell's life begin change. As a writer for the Downtown magazine she is placed at the heart of Atlantan life at a time when life as we know it is changing. Part of Comfort's people and at a time where Dr. Martin Luther King and the Panthers are gaining stride, this book is about change. From the tiniest to the mightiest, it is a reminder that life never really stays the same. An enlightening read.

[Lisa Humphreys · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I thought the ending (epilogue) was a bit abrupt after all the detail of the larger story, I enjoyed reading this and had a hard time putting it down. Characters- Smoky, Brad, Luke, Matt Comfort, John Howard, Teddie and others- set in the 1960s in Atlanta. Smoky is a new editor at a magazine covering the city, and there is a lot about the civil rights movement and the rise of the Black Panthers due to frustration with the slow progress.

[Chris C]

Very refreshing and interesting read. You really learn to fall in love with the characters, become one of Matt Comfort's People, and you feel what they feel as the story progresses. This book sports some really progressive themes that make it feel like it was written more recently than it was. Worthy read.

[Sandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only read the first half of this book. Started off interesting then got a little dull and slow for me. I thought I might love it since I too came to the Atlanta area in the late cities and I know the streets and venues she referenced. Probably missed a lot of the good parts but it just didn't hold my interest.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very dated (not surprisingly), primarily of interest to those who lived through these experiences. Lots of great detail about sixties Atlanta. Well-written, but so far removed from present-day circumstances as to be hardly worth the read.

[Callen · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 but rounding up because I love the descriptiveness of her writing. It was an interesting read against the backdrop of current racial unrest and am wondering how what, if anything, the author would have changed if writing it today.

[Tiffany Manning · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn't disappointed in the story although I thought the first few chapters were slow. I would recommend this book to the serious reader who wants to learn more about the realities of the racial divide in Atlanta and the south in the era of Kennedy and Johnson.

[Susan Failor · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Best

I have read most of Anne Rivers Siddons' books and fully enjoyed them, but Downtown is my favorite one. She totally recreates the 60s in Atlanta. It was a time like no other and she does a great job of winding a good story around it.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could not put this book down. It transported me to a world of publishing that was so interesting and eye opening. I loved the characters but especially Smokey and her story. Only in the Epilogue did it surprise me who she ended up with. Wonderful.

[Pam Nichols]

This book celebrates a young Atlanta and the challenges of racial relations in the '60s. It reads like a history book and the time period is important to remember. Not everything has changed, even now.