Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!
Rate this book!
Write a review?
Oh, this book is killing me. I usually reserve a special place in my heart for Pat Conroy (I think it's the Southerner within that's the culprit), but there are so many things about this book that are annoying me that I am actually keeping a list of them in a small notebook. One example: there are two characters named Fraser and Niles. FRASER. and NILES. I mean, I know he took the i out of "Frasier", but COME ON. ANother example: in the first 44 pages, a 17-year-old straight boy "skips" no fewer...
I am 29% into this book (no page numbers on the kindle...a little disconcerting). Not loving it, so far. The dialogue is really bugging me. Do people really talk like this? Is anyone else out there reading this right now and finding it irritating? I am compelled to keep going, because I want to see where it is going, but if the "witty banter" keeps up, I am going to have to give up. These are the oddest caricatures of Southern "folk" I have read in a long time. Maybe I am from too far north (and...
Pat Conroy’s “South of Broad” is a love song to Charleston with blood on the sheet music. As he walks toward the Cooper River in 1990, six months after Hurricane Hugo tore into his beloved city, narrator Leo King ponders the city’s rebuilding and healing, and the coming spring: “Since the day I was born, I have been worried that heaven would never be half as beautiful as Charleston.”Like his counterpart Tom Wingo in “The Prince of Tides” (1986), Leopold Bloom King is a psychologically wounded ma...
This book has been sitting on my shelf for far too long. I was about to give birth when I tried last time and the stuff about his 10 year old brother committing suicide was too much to take at the time. Going to make it through this time!Okay-I finished. Once I started I wondered why I ever waited. First off I want to say that I feel like in some ways the description did this book an injustice. Yes, it starts in Charleston and they travel to San Francisco but the desription makes it sound like t...
Left of handsome Leopold, “Leo” is the sweetest South Carolina boy that you ever could meet, and he narrates Pat Conroy’s South of Broad. Broad is set in South Carolina and tells the story of his lifelong friendships forged during a fateful summer before his senior year of high school. Raised by a former nun and an all around great guy, Leo and his family is left reeling by the surprise suicide of his older golden brother Stephen. Coming out of his tailspin, shy but clever Leo endears glamorous
Can we add a shelf for "wouldn't waste my time finishing this?" I made it about halfway, trying to talk myself into finishing it. Finally, I couldn't take the horrid, lame dialog, character mix and plotting. This paragraph, spoken by Sheba Poe, famous "sex goddess" movie star, trying to find her disappeared brother about sums it up; "Full page column. Tomorrow morning. Herb's going to tell the story of the famous actress and her high school friends from Charleston who've come to hunt for her bro...
My first Conroy book, and it won't be my last. Good Southern fiction, and a well-drawn, very eclectic bunch of characters make up the cast. We join them in their high school years as they come of age together amid class struggles and the racial tensions of the 60s. Mid-point this group of friends goes to San Francisco seeking a missing friend, a gay man named Trevor who is dying of aids. Not only is it the 80s when aids was considered God's revenge, there's also a psycho killer lurking about, ev...
It pains me to poorly review a book that was written so earnestly as Pat Conroy's "South of Broad", but his latest fiasco, earnest or not, is a treacly, feel-nauseous-to-make-you-feel-good 500 page yuck-fest. Nothing rings at all true in it, despite Conroy's best intentions. One critic from Entertainment Weekly said it was a carbon copy of his earlier successful novel "The Prince of Tides", with the city of Charleston, South Carolina substituted as the locale. I can see what the critic was getti...
Sorry, Pat, but I'm abandoning this novel at 25 percent. Conroy has a lot of Southern charm, but this isn't his best work. The dialogue was too contrived and I wasn't invested in the characters. I did like the Charleston setting and the Bloomsday references, but I hit a wall and decided I need to move on. Conroy has such a big heart that I feel a bit guilty for not finishing, but my pile of unread books is just too large to linger here. I'll circle back and read more of his novels in the future....
I've had this book on my shelf almost since I first joined GoodReads (2012). Pat Conroy recently passed away and he's an author I've never read before, but so glad that I had the chance to start with this one.Set in Charleston, set between past (1960's) and present (1980s) we follow the group of main characters as we learn how they came to be where they are today. The book opens on Bloomsday (Ulysses fans rejoice!) and the Joyce references don't end there- they are riddled through the pages-- ma...
This was the read of the summer for me. I adored it.
Awful. Dreadful. Could it be an intentional self mocking parody of his earlier work? I, like a lot of other reviewers, was looking forward to Conroy's latest novel having enjoyed all his other novels but...Where do I start? Leo narrates the tale and keeps on reminding us that he is a shy youth but never shuts up, and his patter is identical to the youthful lead characters in 'The Great Santini' and 'Lords of Discipline'. A movie star (novels featuring characters who are movie stars are never any...
In Pat Conroy’s first novel in 14 years a group of friends comes together as high-schoolers in the late 1960s and they change each others’ lives. Our guide through this ode to friendship is Leopold Bloom King, second son in every sense to a mother who is not only the principal at his high school, but a former nun and an expert on James Joyce. Conroy uses her as a deus ex Ulysses to manipulate her son into meeting, in a 24 hour stretch, the eight friends who form the core of the tale. That day is...
"I'll admit it; I've never watched or read The Prince of Tides. I didn't know who Pat Conroy was when I received this ARC from Doubleday. The book sounded interesting, so I requested a copy. I didn't know what to expect, and therefore, I probably have a different opinion than someone who is a huge fan of his work.[return][return]Since I didn't know what to expect, what I found was simply amazing. I completely fell in love with Mr. Conroy's descriptions of Charleston. It brought the city to life
This is a difficult book to review. I loved Pat Conroy's The Prince of Tides, and I think he is an immensely talented writer and storyteller. South of Broad, however, is not one of his best works. There were far too many jarring grammatical errors (which occurred as early as page three), the dialogue was awful and the storyline over-the-top dramatic. That said, though, I still found it a compelling read, and Conroy at his worst is still better than 99% of the writers out there. Parts of the book...
Fitzgerald, Irving and Joyce walk into a bar…Ok, maybe there’s no punch line, here, but part of me wants to picture all three men imparting elements of their own writing to Pat Conroy as he sits writing South of Broad.The rolling, epic begins as a love letter to the city of Charleston in the waning summer light of 1969. Rising high school senior, Leopold Bloom, finds himself on the rebound after a tumultuous teenage period, marred by the horrific memory and subsequent drama of his older brother’...
Greatly anticipated and greatly loathed. I love the other Conroy novels. The Great Santini and the Prince of Tides are modern classics. But now Conroy has taken the "dysfunctional South Carolina family" formula and beaten it into the ground.Where to start? Implausible plot elements. I mean PUH-leeze. I can't even cover all the gimmicks Conroy throws into this plot. Give your readers some credit, you don't have to hit them over the head with every imaginable twist on family dysfunction all in one...
The Prince of Tides will always be my favorite book, and I have loved many others written by the great Pat Conroy, but....It hurts my heart to say this. South of Broad is the work of a man who has lost his mojo. It is a book that most likely only got into print because editors deferred to what was once genius, perhaps even assumed that the work would somehow be fine because so much of Conroy's past work is undeniably brilliant.Where do I begin?The plot? What plot? Disjointed rambling thoughts I
Let me start by saying, this is not the best of Pat Conroy, but I so love his writing I could overlook this exercise in a bit of melodrama. As always, his writing is music to my ears, poetic and creates a longing to visit his beloved Charleston and meet all of these characters. I bonded with these characters and they made me think of childhood friends that have stayed with me long into adulthood. This is a story of true friendship, true love....with people and with a place that has molded you.