The Prince Of Tides [Paperback]

I first picked this book up when I needed something to read and had finished or discarded just about everything else on my mothers bookshelf. I was highly impressed by the style of prose: at some points I think it would have sounded better whispered over music. But the element that gives this book some bite is the wonderfully knowing characterisations that lie therein. Coupled with the extremely wry sense of humour, it presents some very sympathetic characters that aren't sickly (Hollywood take note) in a tale of family tragedy and shared secrets. Conroys' only fault is that he never uses one word where he could use ten. However, don't let this get in the way of a moving family saga well woth reading. If you like this try "To Kill a Mockingbird".

Having seen the movie adaptation which starred Barbra Streisand and Nick Nolte, both of whom I find highly irritating, I selected the book slightly reluctantly. To my surprise however, the film and it's visual memory drifted away as Conroy's extraordinarily lyrical style of writing prose wrapped me up in the very taste and smell of Tom's world.

The characters are believable, as are most of the events that unfold, and somehow even those occurrences which are slightly less plausible still seem perfectly so - probably because you don't just read about this world, but thanks to Conroy's style, you live in it. This makes it highly moving and at times uncomfortable. The secrets and lies of a family, the brutality that comes to light and the fact that there really is no happy ending, just life going on as before, perhaps in just a more worldly way - these are all captivating and I felt absolutely bereft when I closed the book.

I can't bring myself to read Conroy's other works in case they fail to live up to the high standard established with "The Prince of Tides".

I recommend this book to anyone who loves a good story well told, and is not afraid to give their heart to a book without receiving it back with just a little piece missing......

I first read this book almost 25 years ago shortly after its publication and, even then as a teenager, it impressed itself so strongly on me that it has remained my favourite book of all time, to which I regularly return to reread again.

This is a book for anyone who has ever had issues with their own families and wondered what it would have been like if they had been born into another. It is a tale for those that have wondered at the eccentricities of a mother or father, or a somewhat off kilter sibling and contemplated the origins of what might have made them that way.

It is a study of the impact of history on a family and how they can survive or fall apart based on the cards that they are dealt and how they choose to deal with them.

And it is a great narrative of mid 20th century American life which was so striking that, years later it led me on a personal pilgrimage to various places referenced which Conroy so lovingly and first-handedly portrays in his novel.

The Prince of Tides is the biography of the Wingo's, a family of passionate outsiders surviving on the sea islands of North Carolina in a fictional town called Colleton, well removed from the sophistication of distant city of Savannah or even the New York that both Savannah and her twin Tom, the narrator of the story, both eventually end up in.

The prince of tides of the title is also a reference to Luke, the only other sibling and older brother of Tom and Savannah and the hero of the story.

The novel spans a time line stretching from the 1930's to the 1980's and straddling both the Second World War and the Vietnam war and portraying the major impact that both these events brought to bear on one American family. It follows the lives of Tom's parents Lila and Henry Wingo and even of Henry parents and how their collective experiences formed and impacted on Tom and Savannah and Luke from childhood into adulthood, creating Savannah into a poet, Tom into a school teacher and coach and Luke into a shrimp fisherman and decorated war hero.

This is a book of, at times, such harrowing tragedy and pain that it sometimes will leave you sobbing and breathless. However it is ultimately a book of redemption and recovery and reconciliation also and in that it gives you hope that even from that darkest of times can emerge beauty and reason and the will to go on to better things and times that will inevitably come.

Finally, up to now I've avoided making reference to the film adaption of the book because it was so disappointing and not a very reflective rendering of the story. However I would say if you are contemplating avoiding the book merely on the basis that you weren't impressed by the film, I say read this book, if only to find out who the Prince of Tides, the heroic Luke Wingo was. His tale will both break and gladden your heart.