“We've pretended too much in our family, Luke, and hidden far too much. I think we're all going to pay a high price for our inability to face the truth.” I can see now why The Prince of Tides is so popular. A combination of emotive storytelling, horrific tragedy and witty dialogue makes it almost impossible to put down. Even when the prose veers close to being too purple, too poetic, a sharp funny comment from Tom Wingo pulls it back.The humour is actually what saves this book from being too

This is the book that is the reason I read anything at all for pleasure. I decided I was going to read it before the movie came out and COMPLETELY fell in love with Conroy's style, renewed my love-affair with the low country of South Carolina, and discovered the joy of diving into a book wholeheartedly. Mr. Conroy is the reason I read today. The stories of what this family went through are heartbreaking at one (or more) moment(s) and hysterical at others. I didn't think the movie was half-bad, b...

I really did not intend to read The Prince of Tides anytime soon until a couple avid reading friends told me I should not pass it by......and they were so right!If you've seen the movie, you already know this is an unforgettable and disturbing story set in both the South Carolina low country and New York City about an extremely dysfunctional family with abusive father Henry and complacent mother Lila whose children are traumatized by their treatment during childhood.......but while Henry's bruta...

There is just too much wrong with this book for me to give it more than two stars. Of course, this merely reflects my personal view.What went wrong for me?Too many topics are covered with inadequate depth. The central theme is physical abuse in a family. How does this affect family members for the rest of their lives? This central theme is expanded to touch upon patriotism, the Vietnam War, nuclear weapons, environmentalism, rape, sexism, feminism, psychiatry, religion, drugs, finally ending wit...

Passion swells for this epic, The Prince of Tides, and so I swim in murky waters here, careful in my criticism not to become The Princess of Against the Tides.Ah, hell. Who am I kidding? This princess often swims against the tide and her upper body is strong.So, let me not mince words. Let's get right to it.Pat Conroy has almost as many devotees as Jesus. I'm not sure about the source of the appeal, but he looks like a jolly gnome in the pictures I've seen of him, and I take him for a man who sh...

A Riptide In Southern English, "naked" means you ain't got no clothes on, while "nekkid" means you ain't got no clothes on and you're up to something. Lewis GrizzardClip of the 3 kids in film version of novel "Man wonders but God decidesWhen to kill the Prince of Tides." A verse from the eponymous poem by Savannah Wingo, the suicidal sister and renowned poet in Pat Conroy's The Prince of Tides, a novel dealing on its surface with the general mentality of the Southern United States,

Before I wrote this, I took a cursory look at a few of the reviews and realized to my dismay that in this case I am the Grinch who took the roast beast. And yet I stand by my rating because this book was for me an exercise in maudlin pablum. The protagonist experiences all matter of tragedy in his youth, both quotidian and bizarre (an abusive wretch of a father, a venal socially climbing mother, a horrific yet nonsensical assault) and then grows up to have a mentally ill sister and a cheating wi...

This book was, like all of Conroy's titles, intensely gripping, humorous at times, coarse and gruesome at others, with more than a few touches of sheer poetry scattered everywhere.Conroy excels at describing tortured family life; in this case the Wingos of South Carolina. Through narrator Tom's eyes, we learn about his parents, his older brother Luke, and his twin sister Savannah. Rarely does one family have so much happening: whether drama comes from inside the family circle or from without, it...

I almost didn't read this one because I have seen the movie numerous times and really didn't care to read about the romance of a small town coach and a big city psychiatrist. This book is SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE MOVIE!!!! Tragic and humorous. Shocking and touching. Brutal and tender. Honest and delusional. Love, fear, unadulterated hatred and inconceivable forgiveness are all combined in an eloquently written novel.

Pat Conroy's prose is tragically acquainted with all the misery and glory and pain and beauty of humanity. It is also deeply entrenched in the American south. I believe he immortalizes his own time and place the way Hemingway did for wartime Europe. This story, so startlingly brutal and direct in it's engagement of the reader, lays out the impressive and failed life of Tom Wingo. The plain good virtue and astonishing cruelty of small-town South Carolina take shape in an uneasy and inevitable con...

I can't remember the last time I felt this torn; I hated the characters for being so selfish with their affections, so cowardly in their confrontations, the cruelty shown when the moment was theirs for the taking. What I hated more was when the victim on the receiving end - and, to be fair, it always rotates - would rise up in anger, but then crumble to their knees in love and forgiveness. And that's also why I loved them. In one moment they felt so betrayed, so dishonored by blood and by love.

This book came highly recommended to me by a coworker. This novel, however, is the most absurdly sentimental and overwrought book I have picked up in many moons. It's hard to describe the feeling of rolling one's eyes for 567 pages. For example, a priest does not just pray with a soldier - instead, "The priest knelt beside my father and they prayed together, priest and warrior transfigured by moonlight, by warfare, destiny, and the urgent, mysterious, and ineffable cries and secrets of souls tur...

Oy gevalt. I think this is a case of a book not aging well. Back in the 80s, this novel was an enormous bestseller and (if I recall) was pretty well received critically too. And, of course, it was made into a lavish movie starring Barbra Streisand and Nick Nolte. But holy sun, stars and moon... this thing is wildly, extravagantly overwritten. Perhaps it needs to be appreciated in its context. Stories of abuse weren't as common back then as they were to be later, so it must have been considered b...

I'm waiting for the day that Pat Conroy will disappoint me. I'm waiting for the day that he fails to astound me, to take my breath away with each poetically seductive word that he has chosen, to stir emotions deep within me that I only feel and understand when I am reading his literature.I am pertinaciously confident that that day will never come.

I'm wearing my softest, fuzziest slippers while writing this review - treading as lightly as I possibly can - realising that I'm on holy ground here, discussing a much beloved book among many of my very dear and respected Goodreads friends. PLEASE, DON'T HATE ME!This book was at a disadvantage from the beginning, because the spectres of Babs and Nick haunted me continuously from the horrendous movie adaptation. However, I was fully expecting to love and revel in this big, romantic, Southern fami...

After years of reading predominantly great reviews of this book, I finally read it, only to wonder why everyone was raving. Perhaps Pat Conroy explained it himself, when he wrote "Savannah's living proof that writing poetry and reading books causes brain damage." I found myself skipping entire pages of pointless description and only skimming the entire "children's book" written by Savannah.Most of the momentous events of the story require the reader to accept the most unbelievable things (Bengal...

My wound is geography.  It is also my anchorage, my port of call.So begins the story of the Wingo family of Melrose Island in Colleton County, South Carolina. As told by Tom Wingo.  To describe our growing up in the lowcountry of South Carolina, I would have to take you to the marsh on a spring day, flush the great blue heron from its silent occupation, scatter marsh hens as we sink to our knees in mud, open you an oyster with a pocketknife and feed it to you from the shell and say, “There.  Tha...

So far,I've read three books by Pat Conroy.There are some common elements in each :Dysfunctional family,abusive father,difficult childhood,traumatic events and even suicide. This is the story of the Wingo family of South Carolina.Henry Wingo is a fisherman,who squanders whatever little money he has on farcical business schemes.His wife is Lila,who is his victim but also a manipulator.Tom Wingo,their child is the narrator.He has had a nervous breakdown,while his sister Savannah is recovering from...

I read a lot of different genres. My only goal is to be entertained. I'll read horror in the hope that there is an author out there who can still shock me. I'll read fantasy or science fiction in the hope that some author will blow my mind with an incredible world or amazing life forms. I'll read suspense thrillers in the hope that there is still an author that will break the mould and twist a plot line so unexpectedly that it will keep me awake at night.Those are the things I look for, and the