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| | Description | The publishing event of the season: The one and only Pat Conroy returns, with a big, sprawling novel that is at once a love letter to Charleston and to lifelong friendship.
Against the sumptuous backdrop of Charleston, South Carolina, South of Broad gathers a unique cast of sinners and saints. Leopold Bloom King, our narrator, is the son of an amiable, loving father who teaches science at the local high school. His mother, an ex-nun, is the high school principal and a well-known Joyce scholar. After Leo's older brother commits suicide at the age of thirteen, the family struggles with the shattering effects of his death, and Leo, lonely and isolated, searches for something to sustain him. Eventually, he finds his answer when he becomes part of a tightly knit group of high school seniors that includes friends Sheba and Trevor Poe, glamorous twins with an alcoholic mother and a prison-escapee father; hardscrabble mountain runaways Niles and Starla Whitehead; socialite Molly Huger and her boyfriend, Chadworth Rutledge X; and an ever-widening circle whose liaisons will ripple across two decades-from 1960s counterculture through the dawn of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.
The ties among them endure for years, surviving marriages happy and troubled, unrequited loves and unspoken longings, hard-won successes and devastating breakdowns, and Charleston's dark legacy of racism and class divisions. But the final test of friendship that brings them to San Francisco is something no one is prepared for. South of Broad is Pat Conroy at his finest; a long-awaited work from a great American writer whose passion for life and language knows no bounds. | |
| | Product Details | | Author: | Pat Conroy | | Hardcover: | 528 pages | | Publisher: | Nan A. Talese | | Publication Date: | August 11, 2009 | | Language: | English | | ISBN: | 038541305X | | Product Length: | 9.38 inches | | Product Width: | 6.6 inches | | Product Height: | 1.3 inches | | Product Weight: | 1.91 pounds | | Package Length: | 9.3 inches | | Package Width: | 6.5 inches | | Package Height: | 1.4 inches | | Package Weight: | 1.55 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 950 reviews |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 950 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
575 of 633 found the following review helpful:
 Another Gift to the South Jun 16, 2009
By W Ray
"W Ray"
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.
691 of 769 found the following review helpful:
 I was excited to read this book, then very disappointed Jul 26, 2009
By Louie's Mom
"Compulsive Reader"
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.
220 of 247 found the following review helpful:
 The Big Chill--on acid Aug 11, 2009
By Susan Tunis
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.
87 of 104 found the following review helpful:
 Ugh...a big disappointment Aug 24, 2009
By Nathan Webster
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.
24 of 26 found the following review helpful:
Not since the Prince of Tides.... Oct 18, 2009
By J. A. Jarman
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.
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