South of Broad [Paperback]

Most of the reviews I've read on this book read like a broken record..."I've waited so long for Conroy to write a new book", "I so wanted to love it and I didn't" or "It didn't live up to my expectations". And these are the reviews from longtime Conroy fans. Yet, even with all of this, most reviewers admit that even a "not great" Conroy book is far better than most of what else is out there. So will my review read like these broken records?...no. But I will say that somewhere along the way, when Conroy was walking "south of Broad", he turned left when he should have turned right and what we're left with is the problem most of the reviewers are writing about.

The book is divided into five parts. While reading the first part, I emailed a friend of mine telling her that I was 100 pages into South of Broad and loving every word I was reading. So, at this point, I couldn't understand all of the so-so reviews. Then I got to Part 2 and I started to understand. Part 3 justified these so-so feelings. Thank goodness for Part 4 and Part 5....otherwise this review might have been heading south all on its own.

It all begins on Bloomsday, June 16, 1969, when, as an upcoming high school senior, Leopold Bloom King meets eight people who will change his life forever. All in one day, his future will be set out before him as it is these eight people who will become his lifelong friends. For those of you who don't know the significance of Bloomsday, it refers to James Joyce's novel Ulysses where all the events take place on the same day, June 16, 1904, in Dublin and, the main character in Joyce's novel happens to be named Leopold Bloom. So it almost makes sense that our Leopold Bloom King will have events occur all on the same day that will shape his life as well. Just in case you're wondering, Leo's mother is also a Joycean scholar and lives and breathes everything James Joyce.

So begins our journey into Leo King's life (better known to his friends as The Toad). As I mentioned before, the book is divided into five parts. The first part delves into Leo's life as a child, living through his own brother's suicide and the ramifications of what this can do to a young child. By the end of Part 1, he has been through hell and back and is ready to begin his senior year of high school, where his mother is the principal and his father is a science teacher. Nobody can tell a story like Conroy and he excels in this part of the book. He tells of Leo's morning newspaper route and I swear no one could make a mundane task such as this sound so exhilerating. In this section, he also explains Leo's upbringing as a Catholic, with a mother who is an ex-nun and whose after newspaper route routine includes serving as an altarboy at morning mass every day. Having grown up going to Catholic elementary school with three brothers who were all altarboys, I could so relate to this part. I could almost smell Conroy's description when he says, "the smell of the Catholic world washed over me" as Leo is entering the church to serve mass.

Part 2 fast forwards to twenty years later when Leo is now working for the same newspaper he delivered every morning as a teenager. All of his friends are still with him and, as a reader, it is fun to catch up with what they have done with their lives. Part 3 finds them all heading out to San Francisco in search of one of the infamous eight who has gone missing. It is these two parts that fell short for me and I can't put my finger on the reason but trust me.....it will happen to you as well. At this point, I emailed that same friend and said I hope one of the later parts of the book brings me back to his life as a senior in high school because so far Conroy hadn't shed any light on those years. Conroy did not disappoint and, once again, writes a good section in Part 4 about this time in the friends' lives. The last section, Part 5, brings us up-to-date with all of them once again, in 1989, as they try to stave off the wind and rain of Hurricane Hugo, while at the same time trying to keep out of the line of fire of someone who is bent on killing them all.

Yes, you read right. Conroy has a killer in this book. This is the part that I just didn't get and didn't feel the need. There's so much I could write about this book but I have to remember that I'm writing a review and not an English paper. This is one author whose descriptions and storytelling I like much more than his dialogue (in this book at least). I felt the dialogue was a bit fatuous (for lack of a better word) and most times, I just didn't like the repartee between the characters.

But the best part of the book is about Charleston itself. Because many of these characters are hurting and Charleston is a city "who" can actually heal you. Let's face it -- Charleston is as real a person as the characters in this book are and, perhaps, as real as Pat Conroy himself. This book is a love affair with Charleston as much as it is a testament to James Joyce's Bloomsday. I finished this book and wanted to book the first flight out to South Carolina. But I also have to say that this book also says something about Conroy's life as a Catholic because he's obviously trying to lash out for something that might have happened to him or someone he knows. Again, growing up as a Catholic, I can totally feel his pain.

Is this a book I won't forget? -- Yes. Is this a book I would recommend to my friends? -- No. The reason is that I only recommend great books to my friends and this is just a "good book". Sad to say, it's just not vintage Conroy. But is he still one of my favorite authors of all time....the unequivocal answer is YES!!!

There's an awful lot of crying in this book. Everybody cries. Grown men fall down on the ground and howl - and invariably are then surrounded by an assortment of chums and colleagues who do a lot of hugging. Do Southern people really carry on like this? After what - 14 years? - this book is a bit of a disappointment. It seems rather formulaic, takes far too long to get into and the surprise ending is no surprise. Has Conroy lost the plot? His prose has always been overblown and florid, and mostly enjoyable, but this is going to far. For God's sake, Pat, hold the tears.

Like others, I very much enjoyed Conroy's earlier novels, but this was very much a disappointment.
The characters were really caricatures rather than characters and were completely unbelievable. By the end of the novel there was no empathy with them, and I was pleased to let them go.