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Beautiful!It's weird because there's something amateur? unintellectual? about his writing, yet it's profoundly wise and he comes up with poetic comparisons all over the place. I can't place it. Maybe the characters are a bit too cheesy at times. Hopeless romantic? I don't know. But he writes about insanely tragic things and with utter understanding. This and Prince of Tides are very healing books - they have a raw power. One paragraph summed up my Mom in such beauty that that is all I need to kn...
Pat Conroy wrote the beautiful introduction to one of my all-time favorite books, “Gone with the Wind”. My rule with classics, not that I read them as often as I probably should, is to read the introduction after completing the book. Once I finished “Gone with the Wind” and then read Conroy’s introduction, I knew that this would be an author that I need to look into. “Beach Music” is the first book that I have read by him. It grabbed me right from the start and I was hooked. Even though we were
My Original Notes (1996):The BEST!I think this has to be one of the very best books I've ever read. I couldn't put it down and didn't want it to end. I want to read everything Pat Conroy has ever written. He writes the most beautiful sentences and I felt like I could see, hear, taste and smell everything he described. The characters became a part of me. I laughed. I cried. What a beautiful, lyrical book. I recommend it to everyone. Rod read it in a few days and enjoyed it, too.My Current Thought...
Not so much a book as a life experience, Pat Conroy's Beach Music covers a heck of a lot of topics. Like his other titles this one has family and friendship are the forefront but the scope of this novel was vast covering alcoholism, suicide, schizophrenia, domestic violence, religion, the holocaust, the vietnam war, politics, trust, sickness, survival, and love in all shapes and sizes. He so thoroughly tackles each topic it sometimes felt like he'd written several books in one. Primarily set in
I wanted to like Pat Conroy’s Beach Music. Really, I did. The opening paragraph (a stunning, lyrical evocation of a young woman’s suicide) drew me into the sprawling, eight hundred page tome. At first glance, the book seemed to have all the elements of a rip-roaring good yarn: betrayal, forgiveness, intergenerational conflict, and a number of love affairs thrown in for good measure. At the story’s start, we meet main character Jack McCall, who (with only his daughter, Leah, for company) is livin...
I would never have read this book, had it not been left in a pile of paperbacks on a rig offshore, and I had I not finished the two books I brought with me already. I honestly had no idea what to expect, and almost put it down after 13 pages because Talladega Nights was on HBO.But I didn't, and I spent large chunks of my afternoons once back onshore reading this monstrosity. Beach Music is a grand, sweeping novel of a Southern man in a Southern city in a Southern state (South Carolina, ironicall...
I'm having a hard time kicking this review off, because there is just...so much.I finished this novel last night and have started another, but my head is still full of this story.When I was about 3/4 through the story, an image came to mind. You know when you place a drop of oil on a water surface and then that drop expands out? That's how this story structure seemed to evolve.Beach Music starts off with the main character talking about his wife, who had jumped off a South Carolina bridge to her...
While competently written and quite entertaining, Beach Music tries to be too many books in one. I didn't think the various aspects of the story resonated with each other enough to belong in the same book. I felt that Conroy could have written three tighter novels with the material he packed into this one loose one. For example, the long backstory about Lucy's childhood, while interesting, could have been shortened considerably or left to the imagination. It was enough to know she wasn't "of goo...
“A story gives only pleasure. A lie gives mostly pain.” (3.5 stars) BEACH MUSIC is a novel that requires you to suspend your disbelief, then suspend it some more, then stomp on it, kick it in the mouth, and then suspend it again. I was all over the place with this book! At times it is so melodramatic, it borders on being a soap opera. And yet you keep reading because you recognize Pat Conroy’s talent, and you trust him to snap out of it (he does for brief interludes) and because you don’t want t...
This is a really beautifully written story.I've purchased this book no less than 4 different times. Every time someone saw it they wanted to borrow it and somehow it never got returned. My mother-in-law filched the last copy I bought and she SWEARS it belongs to her.I picked up yet another copy to take away with me and read while traveling and am truly enjoying re-discovering just how wonderful it is to read Pat Conroy.I'm so pleased to have picked this book up again. What a joy to read such art...
Just absolutely loved this novel! It was a bit long but the characters are both warm and endearing. Pat Conroy is a fabulous author.
I met Pat Conroy at a book signing event in Atlanta when this book was released. There just so happened to be another Furman Alumni in line ahead of us and I heard Conroy say something about Furman. I spoke up making sure he knew I was there. His response was something like "You Furman people are like Lynx, you're everywhere!" So, thinking I understood that his spat with The Citadel had turned him sour against the school I made some smartass, derogatory comment about The Citadel. He signed my bo...
Prior to reading Beach Music, I had only experienced Conroy in his reading memoir, My Reading Life. Since I knew he would be at the SC Book Festival, I spent most of my reading time this past week coming back to this book. I had started it on a beach trip with my sister over spring break, but some of the topics were a little too close to me at that time.Jack, the main character in this novel, has lived in Rome with his daughter Leah ever since his wife Shyla committed suicide and he had a very c...
I was initially skeptical about starting up one of these "blockbuster" novels, but Beach Music's prologue was surprisingly well written and I found myself strangely captivated to read on. As a testament to the quality of that prologue, I waded through a couple hundred pages of overwrought and overweight storytelling just to find some closure on the Jack McCall's wife's suicide mystery. There would be times in my reading when I had to look away from the book because the prose would be so sentimen...
Pat Conroy is a magical writer, and his 'Beach Music,' is no exception. This is perhaps my favorite book of all time, though I do alternate with his other, 'The Prince of Tides,' so beware that I'm reviewing 'Beach Music' as a committed Conrophile, (if such a phrase could exist). Jack McCall is a sweeping character, and when the book opens, we find he and his daughter ensconced away in Rome after a family tragedy. What follows is a story that, in my opinion, weaves a brilliant quilt of familiarl...
I've read Beach Music twice. After the first reading, 15 years ago, I decided it was one of the best books I'd ever read. Now, in 2010, I finally re-read it and came to the exact same conclusion. It is simply a brilliant, complex work that few writers other than Pat Conroy would even attempt to pull off.Those who don't like the book usually focus on its length (nearly 800 pages), and what they call the "indistinguishable" brothers. When it comes to book length, my view is that a bad book at 50 p...
The back cover of this book doesn't give a very good description of what the plot is about. And why would it (how could it?), when the plot is this much of a mess? In short: Jack McCall is an American who moves to Rome with his young daughter after his wife commits suicide, intending to never see anyone from his past again (including his own family), but he eventually comes home and starts dealing with the past.The long version of the plot is... I don't even know where to begin, the book is such...
Possibly one of the worst books I have ever had the misfortune to read. I bought it after hearing Nan Talese, Conroy's editor, talk about how it was put together. In retrospect, I should have realized that her telling of how Conroy was impaired by drink and depression during the writing of the book, and her active role in putting the book together meant it would be a crazy-quilt hodgepodge rambling Faulkner wannabe of a book. When the Nazis showed up, I though, Oh My God.
When Pat Conroy initially wrote it,the draft was over 2,000 pages.He had already received an advance for a million dollars and had already spent it,without writing the book.His personal life was in turmoil at the time and he was having trouble with his then wife,whom he later accused of stealing millions of dollars from him.The book was cut down from the original 2,000 pages.But even then,the sheer size of this book is daunting,over 600 pages,in my hardback edition.And it rambles,it feels fairly...
Pat Conroy has done it again! A fantastic 5 star audiobook on cassettes! I could not stop listening to this novel until it was finished! Wow! Thanks to my Goodreads friends who recommended this masterpiece with their excellent reviews. My only regret is that it has taken me until today to find BEACH MUSIC and read it. It is about love, childhood, dysfunctional families, horrors of World War II, abuse, growing up, university days, environmental issues, anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, priesthood,...