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516 of 585 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another Gift to the South, June 16, 2009
This review is from: South of Broad (Hardcover)
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.
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574 of 656 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
I was excited to read this book, then very disappointed, July 26, 2009
This review is from: South of Broad (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
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.
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167 of 198 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The Big Chill--on acid, August 11, 2009
This review is from: South of Broad (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
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 are 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. That is 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 in the world. 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. And we learn just how incestuous this 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 what the author may be working through. Nonetheless, though revisiting a lot of territory, Conroy jumbles things up in new and interesting ways.
I had a very 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 usually think better of Pat Conroy. Some of the language exhibits his renowned lyricism, but much of the dialog is cringe-worthy. Each of these characters attempts to be more witty and glib than the next. Their dialog 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 truly 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 rang false. 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.
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