Customer Reviews

South of Broad LARGE PRINT

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I read an advanced reader's copy of this new Conroy novel and must

say that it is simply beautiful from the first line. The story, set in

the late sixties till the nineties, mostly in Charleston, is centered on

the life of Leo King. Born into a devout Catholic family, Leo is haunted

by his brother's suicide, and trying to salvage a ruined adolescence with

the help of a handful of best friends, who have their own histories and

ghosts to deal with. Conroy often writes of salvation through friendship,

and this is his strongest novel yet on the subject. It is also an

unexpectedly Catholic novel, and at base, a very devout one. The South,

and the Low Country in particular, are exalted, beloved, and cherished in

prose so fine it breaks your heart. I don't want to spoil the story in

any way, but have to say that the last pages did that thing that modern

novels seem incapable of doing these days: it lifted my heart, ending on

just the loveliest, most affirming word (won't say what.)

Read the first line and you'll understand.

Years ago I read Conroy's "Prince of Tides" and was enthralled with the story. After reading it I felt a certain fondness that readers sometimes feel for authors - a gratitude for the author bringing the story to me, and doing it well. I was very excited to receive this new novel of Conroy's all these years later. I didn't read any reviews of it as I wanted to come to the book with a totally open mind.

About 30 pages into "South of Broad" I began to feel uncomfortable with the book, and with reviewing it. The dialogue seemed stilted, and did not ring true, particularly in light of the ages of the main characters at the beginning. This issue continued throughout the book and I finally marked a page in order to find it again when I was finished and ready to review the book. Here is the passage I marked as an example: "Tonight, Sheba Poe" Ike says, "you're coming clean. You're going to lay it all out for us. I don't mind dying for you. I really don't. But I'd sure as hell like to know why." The reader is asked to believe that a grown, married man with a wife and children would volunteer to help out a childhood friend, and risk his life in doing so, as long as the childhood friend tells him her entire story.

This passage is also indicative of another issue I had with the book - there are numerous high drama episodes in the lives of the friends. There are so many that the book began to seem, to me, like the plot of a soap opera as opposed to a story that I could imagine is true.

The relationships in the book really stretched credibility. Given the incredibly ugly episodes among some of the characters in their teenage years, it is not plausible that as adults they were regularly socializing and calling each other "friends."

I wanted very much to like this book but just can't. If you grew up in the south and want to read something that touches on the issues all of us experienced (the social divide between the older, established families in the community, most of them with great wealth, and the more ordinary citizens; race relations as the community was forced to change due to integration and long overdue social changes; religion; and homosexuality) then you will find much in the novel you can identify with.

I wish that Nan Talese had taken a firmer hand as editor and had Conroy rework the dialogue and tone down the drama. I am uncomfortable writing such a negative review of the work of an author I have long admired. If I hadn't received the book as part of the Vine program, and felt obligated to review it, I wouldn't have.

Leopold Bloom King ("Leo" to friends) is the narrator of Pat Conroy's first novel in 14 years. The story opens on Bloomsday, 1969, in Charleston, South Carolina. Most families don't commemorate this celebration of the work of James Joyce, but then again, most parents don't name their sons after fictional Joycean characters. At the tender age of 18, painfully shy Leo has had enough drama to last a lifetime. Trouble began early with his radiant older brother's suicide. Leo found the body. This led to years of therapy and adventures within the mental health care system. Finally released from institutions, Leo is immediately convicted of a crime he didn't commit, but for which he won't defend himself. All of this has occurred before the events of the novel, and is exposited in the first 50 pages or so.

On that fateful Bloomsday, Leo is finally on the verge of getting his act together. And this kid is too good to be true. He's got no friends his own age, but Leo is genuinely kind-hearted and charms any adult willing to give him a chance. However, everything changes on that day. It's the day that larger-than-life twins Sheba and Trevor Poe move across the street. It is also the day that he meets Ike Jefferson, the son of his new African American football coach (thanks to desegregation). It is the day he meets teenage orphans Niles and Starla Whitehead, just arrived in town and handcuffed to their chairs. And, finally, it is the day he meets South of Broad bluebloods, Chad and Fraser Rutledge and the beautiful Molly Huger. It is, in short, an eventful day.

The non-linear novel is told in five parts. That first part establishes the rich Charleston setting, gives the necessary exposition, and cements the life-altering relationships of these high school friends. Part two is set 20 years later. It is 1989, and Sheba Poe has returned to Charleston as one of the biggest movie stars alive. She's a drama-queen of the highest order, but she hasn't forgotten her friends or her roots. As the group of friends reunites around Sheba's surprise visit, we see what's become of the teenagers we've just gotten to know. We learn just how incestuous the group is, and who ended up married to whom.

It was this section, more than any other, that reminded me powerfully of the film The Big Chill--right down to the South Carolina setting, the careers of some of the friends, and the many (many!) issues they are dealing with. Section three sees this close-knit group on a quest to San Francisco. One of their number, openly gay and rumored to be dying of AIDS, is missing. No one has heard from him in over a year. Part four returns us to 1969, and the friends' senior year of high school. It is here that we learn more of the events that led to the adult lives these people were leading 20 years later. And finally (and I do mean finally, as the book came in at over 500 pages), part five returns to 1989/1990 and the culmination of the all plots and dramas we've exhaustingly witnessed.

It is a truly STAGGERING list of discord. All the typical Conroy highlights are hit: daddy issues, mommy issues, male and female rape, suicide, southern living, mental illness, military education, team sports, adultery, relationships with coaches, family drama, and so much more. This sort of redundancy of themes can't help but make you wonder a bit about the author. Nonetheless, though revisiting a lot of territory, Conroy jumbles things up in new and interesting ways.

I had a mixed reaction to this book. I can (and will) criticize any number of aspects of this novel, but I can't deny that it was entertaining. It's compulsively readable, but in a trashy, guilty pleasure sort of way. I generally think better of Pat Conroy. Some of the language exhibits his renowned lyricism, but much of the dialogue is cringe-worthy. Each of the characters attempts to be more witty and glib than the next. Their dialogue is a non-stop stream of one-liners, innuendo, and casual racism. None of it rings true, and goes a long way towards making these characters, their actions, and the constant high-drama simply too much to believe. Most of the characters are extreme personalities (some of them downright repugnant), and I found it hard to believe that their bonds were as tight as was depicted. The entire San Francisco section found Conroy way out of his element, and while he convincingly narrated through the eyes of an outsider, the story he told lacked authenticity. Armisted Maupin he's not.

And I mentioned it before, but by the end of the book, the non-stop drama of these people's lives is exhausting. Family drama, relationship drama, racial drama, religious drama, deaths, suicides, crimes, affairs, addiction, mental illness, natural disasters, and not one psychopath--but two! Folks, it's a lot to take in. Mr. Conroy's stored up a lot of plot lines in the time he's been away from fiction, and apparently he decided to use them all.

I'm sure his fans will defend this novel. And it's already a best-seller, but this is far from his strongest work. Read if you're a die-hard fan, or just want a page-turner, but if you're expecting a lot more than that, I expect you'll be disappointed.

Conroy's "Lords of Discipline" is my all-time favorite novel, with "Prince of Tides" somewhere near the top as well. I was never a big fan of "Beach Music," but only because the plot never drew me in.

This is unfortunately a disaster of a novel - not much more than the lowest kind of southern-fried melodrama. It painfully makes clear that being a novelist isn't something you can put aside for years at a time, and hope your skills return to you at the same high level. The writer of "Lords" and "Prince" is nothing but a shadow here.

I'm not going to give plot points away. But...the tragic narrator (a Conroy set-piece) is not sympathetic or relatable. The dialogue is stilted and expository, and the characters don't behave in a realistic fashion. The conversations he wrote that seemed so real in his other books, seem completely phony in "South," written to move the plot along, not to actually bring life to the characters.

There is of course a twist at the end, and it is aw-ful. It comes completely out of the blue, for no good reason, and I'm not even sure what reaction I as the reader was supposed to have. It's not a question of "getting it," because he hits the reader with a hammer. But an author can't throw a twist like this without some effective foreshadowing, which isn't there at all.

He has touched on race relations in all his previous books, but in this one it really descends to the level of the "magic Negro," where the black characters are all saintly and perfect, only existing to help the growth of the white characters.

A main character dies in a surprising - in a bad way - fashion. Again, with no set up and no point. The author owes the reader some reason to care about the things that are happening. Surprises are fine, but not without fitting into the premise of the story.

I could go on, and unfortunately on. It's not good. It's bad. Very bad. I'm terribly disappointed, not just for this book, but for the realization that Conroy's days of being a great novelist are behind him. This "let's wait 10 years between novels" just doesn't work. There aren't too many authors who can put their talents in cold storage and just expect them to reawaken. Conroy's editors did him a grave disservice. Maybe this could have been good, but it needed a lot more work.

Anyway...Conroy has a lot of loyal fans, including me. This isn't worth the money. Sorry.

I write this review so that you don't miss the chance to have a love affair, as did I, with "South of Broad" just because you stumbled across the comments of a critic who was less than enamored with Pat Conroy's latest book. I write this from the perspective of that of reader and not that of a book critic. First, I do want to admit my bias as one who is a fan of Pat Conroy's work- so you know from where I come. My appreciation for Conroy's work is not blind, however, as I will not fawn over his two works of fiction that came out after the "Prince of Tides." I read them, but they did not resonate with me as does this latest work.

"South of Broad" touched me as did the "Prince of Tides." I reveled with my coffee each morning as I read a chapter before I started my day. No morning newspaper for me until I turned the last page of a chapter. And I read each page slowly as I loathed for my time with "SOB" to end as it signaled it was time to enter the real world and leave these characters behind until another day began.

"South of Broad" is Conroy at his Conroyist best. The prose is there; the banter between characters is there; the location in the South's low country is there; and the psychopathology is there- this IS Conroy. And this is where my comments about style will end as this is a review, again, for readers. I love the story. I love the characters. I was entertained- no, better yet, I was thrilled. I love the book.

And If I can write one line that might help you decide whether to pick up "South of Broad," let me finish by saying that "South of Broad" brought me great pleasure like no work of fiction has since the "Prince of Tides." And isn't that why we pick up such works?

Thanks Pat, for doing what you do.

Fans of Pat Conroy's previous fiction can now rejoice that the long wait since "Beach Music" has now ended. The narrator, Leo King, is the troubled son of an idealized science teacher father and a former nun, now high school principal devoted to the writing of James Joyce, growing up in Charleston, South Carolina, in the late 1960's. Of course what boy wouldn't be troubled after discovering his older brother's suicide at a young age, and then spending time in a mental institution, only later to be placed on probation due to a drug arrest that was really no fault of his own?

As difficult as Leo's life may seem, it pales in comparison with that of the twins who move into the house across the street: an openly gay boy and a sister who eventually becomes a famous actress, both of whom are constantly moved from town to town by a psychopathic abusive father intent upon killing anyone who becomes close with his children, or the brother and sister from the town's orphanage, one of whom later marries Leo, only to have her life spiral down into the throes of her borderline personality disorder.

The story follows this group of friends through several decades of their lives during which times they must struggle with issues of discrimination based upon class, race, and sexual orientation. Naturally there couldn't be a Pat Conroy novel that did not touch upon high school sports or The Citadel, although not as much as in his previous books. A warning to the squeamish, however, is that it also includes mention of the sexual abuse of children, as was the case in "The Prince of Tides."

Although the stories may differ, anyone familiar with the famous wit of Pat Conroy's narration will not be disappointed to find more of the same in "South of Broad." I can think of no other writer better able to deliver such a devastating and/or humorous put-down to another person, whether as in this book, the victim is a racist, a blue-blood, a psychopathic killer, a nun, or a even a priest. I have also read few books in which an author's love of a particular city shone through more clearly than Conroy's love for Charleston in this novel.

Although I would not rank this book higher than "The Prince of Tides," I did enjoy it more than Conroy's last novel, "Beach Music." Although not as sprawling a work as "Beach Music," "South of Broad" was not a book that I found myself wanting to finish quickly and purposely read it over a couple of weeks. Now that I have finished it my only hope is that we will not have wait another fourteen years for Pat Conroy to grace us with his next novel.

Over the years, I have read all of Pat Conroy's books. I really enjoy them and think he is one of the best authors of our time. At least, I enjoy how he tells a story and the characters he crafts. So, I was excited to get South of Broad and was ready to enter the world he created in this book.

I liked the first 100 pages or so and enjoyed reading about the world of Charleston as described by Conroy. Then, it turned and I started feeling less comfortable with the characters and the friendships between them. I just couldn't believe the dialogue as it didn't seem realistic. I kept thinking that the characters were FLAMBOUYANT, which wasn't bad until that flamboyance became so pervasive that it just didn't ring true or seem realistic. It meant that there was almost constant high drama in the latter parts of the book and it just didn't seem probable or plausible. The characters were so dramatic, they became cut-out characters for the author to move around.

I wish I had liked this book because I really, really wanted to. After all, it was the first Pat Conroy book in years and years. But, the characters and story spiraled out of control early on and the book just isn't a good read.

"He treated the stars as if they were love songs to him created by God." How can you resist the author of such language? He had me at the prologue. That said, much of Conroy's lengthy and vivid novel gets bogged down in distractions, but they are such elegant, imaginative distractions that it is difficult not to indulge, like a few minutes of guilty gossip. Given the variety of characters and social backgrounds, this novel is busting with larger-than-life personalities who meet during a celebration of James Joyce in 1969 and again twenty years later, when their lives have fallen into predictable paths.

The star is Leo Bloom King, whose mother is a devoted Joyce scholar, ex-nun and rigid high school principal. After the suicide of his ten year old brother, Stephen, Leo's family falls apart, never recovering from that early fatal blow, Leo's father serving as a buffer between surviving son (did the wrong one die?) and an unforgiving and unforgivable mother. 1969, the summer of Leo's eighteenth birthday, ushers in a group of new acquaintances, friends who will enrich and baffle, all dressed in the shimmering promise of youth: Trevor and Sheba Poe, extraordinarily talented twins; orphans Niles and Starla Whitehead; socialite Molly Huger and her boyfriend, a natural son of Charleston, Chadworth Rutledge X; and Ike Jefferson, son of the first black coach at Leo's high school.

Times they are a'changin'. It is the beginning of desegregation. But this is the south, where the women are beautiful, oozing charm, save one whose integrity and family afford the same social cachet; the men are more complicated, their motives less clear. The somewhat odd, but generous Leo, deeply wounded by Stephen's suicide, embraces this eclectic group, a cross-cultural marriage of poverty and wealth, prejudice and pride, all veiled in the habit of polite social discourse. Leo becomes an influential news columnist, Sheba a movie star, the others successful in their life choices, not a loser among them, until the arrival of a sinister visitor from the past.

Conroy reveals the ugly secrets and shameful histories that have haunted this group of friends as they come together in joint purpose in 1989 to extinguish the mistakes of the past and reclaim their youthful attachments. From the acerbic comments of a crotchety, lonely old gentleman to the outbursts of Leo's bitter mother, from Sheba's blatantly seductive manipulations to Leo's disappointment in marriage, from magnolia-scented Charleston to the fear-riddled ambiance of San Francisco's Tenderloin, Conroy is the epitome of southern charm and lifelong angst, forever yearning for an ideal while navigating the possible, a treasure for his vision and the worlds he reveals, both bright and dark. Luan Gaines/2009.

Please believe me when I say I wanted, more than anything, to love this novel and give it five stars. I love Pat Conroy; Prince of Tides is one of my all time favorite novels. When I saw South of Broad in the Amazon Vine selection, I was elated! And, to be fair, the book starts off wonderfully. Conroy's power of description and ability to evoke the very essence of time and place are in full effect in the first 100+ pages. He does a good job of giving a full family background of the story's protagonist, Leo Bloom King (yes, James Joyce fans will have a few extra things to be excited about), and describing with aplomb the natural beauty of Charleston, SC.

However, and I think others will agree here, the novel falls apart when Sheba and Trevor Poe's freaky father appears. The red nail polish thing is ridiculous, and the fact that it reoccurs throughout the text drives me to distraction. Furthermore, the writing becomes very soap opera-esque once the childhood portion ends and we see Leo and his friends as adults. A lot of them seem like stock characters, plain and simple: The self-absorbed, emotionally bankrupt movie star; the cocksure, southern, "old money" lawyer; the estranged, maniac psycho father; the homely southern belle with a heart of gold; the troubled orphan with a chip on her shoulder and a mental imbalance; the angry black man...truth be told, the characters simply do not seem realistic to me. While I can appreciate the charming, self-deprecating humor of Leo King (a typical trait of Conroy's narrators), most of the others (and even Leo at times) are what I expect to see late at night in a grade B movie on the Hallmark or Oxygen channel.

My last complaint is Conroy's choice of character names. Some of them are so cacophonous to the ear! Sheba Poe? Starla Whitehead? I don't know, maybe I am being too picky, but I definitely expected more from Conroy after all of these years.

As I said, the first hundred pages or so were great...but as the book progresses, it ceases to actually progress, if you get my drift.

I have about 150 pages left. I will finish it out of respect for Conroy and in hopes that the novel will redeem itself (in which case, I will delete this review...but don't count on it.)

If you are a huge Conroy fan, don't get your hopes up. I would suggest rereading his tried and true favorites, among them Prince of Tides and The Water is Wide.

The only reason I didn't give this book a one star rating is my longtime admiration of Pat Conroy. My loyalty felt misplaced after reading this book though. My biggest complaint is with the dialogue...nobody talks like that! All of the characters have the same voice, regardless of their upbringing and social status. They are all smartasses and when they aren't wisecracking, they're engaging in maudlin weeping. God, enough already. The lack of any redeeming female character was equally maddening. Really, every single female is either a whore, an emotionally bankrupt prude, a raving lunatic or long suffering martyr. Spare me.

"South of Broad" is almost "The Prince of Tides" retold from a different perspective. Boy/girl twins who are emotionally and physically abused, a psychopathic killer stalking a family, a mystical water dwelling mammal, an idolized older brother who meets a tragic end; Conroy really trotted out the clichés in this one. The entire book just seems lazy and the "twist" at the end is so cheap and forced, I actually threw the book aside in disgust. Thank God I borrowed this book from the library, wasting $29.95 would have been tragic.