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South of Broad [ROUGH-CUT EDGE] (Hardcover)
by Pat Conroy
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From Publishers Weekly
Charleston, S.C., gossip columnist Leopold Bloom King narrates a paean to his hometown and friends in Conroy's first novel in 14 years. In the late '60s and after his brother commits suicide, then 18-year-old Leo befriends a cross-section of the city's inhabitants: scions of Charleston aristocracy; Appalachian orphans; a black football coach's son; and an astonishingly beautiful pair of twins, Sheba and Trevor Poe, who are evading their psychotic father. The story alternates between 1969, the glorious year Leo's coterie stormed Charleston's social, sexual and racial barricades, and 1989, when Sheba, now a movie star, enlists them to find her missing gay brother in AIDS-ravaged San Francisco. Too often the not-so-witty repartee and the narrator's awed voice (he is very fond of superlatives) overwhelm the stories surrounding the group's love affairs and their struggles to protect one another from dangerous pasts. Some characters are tragically lost to the riptides of love and obsession, while others emerge from the frothy waters of sentimentality and nostalgia as exhausted as most readers are likely to be. Fans of Conroy's florid prose and earnest melodramas are in for a treat. (Aug.)
Copyright ? Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
An unlikely group of Charlestonian teens forms a friendship in 1969, just as the certainties and verities of southern society are quaked by the social and political forces unleashed earlier in the decade. They come from all walks of life, from the privileged homes of the aristocracy, from an orphanage, from a broken home where an alcoholic mother and her twins live in fear of a murderous father, from the home of public high school’s first black football coach, and from the home of the same school’s principal. The group’s fulcrum, Leopold Bloom King, second son of an ex-nun Joyce scholar, who is also the school’s principal, and a science-teacher father, is just climbing out of childhood mental illness after having discovered his handsome, popular, athletic, scholarly older brother dead from suicide. Over the next two decades, these friends find success in journalism, the bar, law enforcement, music, and Hollywood. Echoing some themes from his earlier novels, Conroy fleshes out the almost impossibly dramatic details of each of the friends’ lives in this vast, intricate story, and he reveals truths about love, lust, classism, racism, religion, and what it means to be shaped by a particular place, be it Charleston, South Carolina, or anywhere else in the U.S. --Mark Knoblauch
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Another Gift to the South, June 16, 2009
By W Ray "W Ray" (Bay County)
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.
Living breathing characters that you will care about!, June 14, 2009
By Jenny Blickman "from the block" (USA)
I was very excited to get an advance copy of "South of Broad" through a friend of the authors. Conroy has been one of my favorite authors since I read the excellent "The Prince of Tides: A Novel" Years ago. The author is one of the best at developing living breathing characters that you actually care about and can believe in.
This is the story of a diverse group of teenagers, from Charlston, SC, who form a friendship in the late 1960s having to grow up under the changes of that time period. They are a diverse group but all come from a particular place and a particular time. Over the following twenty years Conroy portrays the life and times of each of the characters in dramatic fashion. And the characters do live pretty dramatic lives from the legal profession to the music industry and Hollywood. But they all come from the same place yet with different backgrounds (the privileged to the struggling, from black and white). Within the story racism, religion, love, and lust are all explored . In the end they are all brought back together to face test none of the ever expected that will test the bonds of the friendships. Great, engaging fiction; fans of Conroy will be very pleased!
For more great character development I have to recommend Misfits CountryMarilyn Monroe and Clark Gable brought to life!
"You can walk away from anything but a wounded soul.", June 14, 2009
By Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA)
"He treated the stars as if they were love songs to him created by God." How can you resist the author of such language? He had me at the prologue. That said, much of Conroy's lengthy and vivid novel gets bogged down in distractions, but they are such elegant, imaginative distractions that it is difficult not to indulge, like a few minutes of guilty gossip. Given the variety of characters and social backgrounds, this novel is busting with larger-than-life personalities who meet during a celebration of James Joyce in 1969 and again twenty years later, when their lives have fallen into predictable paths.
The star is Leo Bloom King, whose mother is a devoted Joyce scholar, ex-nun and rigid high school principal. After the suicide of his ten year old brother, Stephen, Leo's family falls apart, never recovering from that early fatal blow, Leo's father serving as a buffer between surviving son (did the wrong one die?) and an unforgiving and unforgivable mother. 1969, the summer of Leo's eighteenth birthday, ushers in a group of new acquaintances, friends who will enrich and baffle, all dressed in the shimmering promise of youth: Trevor and Sheba Poe, extraordinarily talented twins; orphans Niles and Starla Whitehead; socialite Molly Huger and her boyfriend, a natural son of Charleston, Chadworth Rutledge X; and Ike Jefferson, son of the first black coach at Leo's high school.
Times they are a'changin'. It is the beginning of desegregation. But this is the south, where the women are beautiful, oozing charm, save one whose integrity and family afford the same social cachet; the men are more complicated, their motives less clear. The somewhat odd, but generous Leo, deeply wounded by Stephen's suicide, embraces this eclectic group, a cross-cultural marriage of poverty and wealth, prejudice and pride, all veiled in the habit of polite social discourse. Leo becomes an influential news columnist, Sheba a movie star, the others successful in their life choices, not a loser among them, until the arrival of a sinister visitor from the past.
Conroy reveals the ugly secrets and shameful histories that have haunted this group of friends as they come together in joint purpose in 1989 to extinguish the mistakes of the past and reclaim their youthful attachments. From the acerbic comments of a crotchety, lonely old gentleman to the outbursts of Leo's bitter mother, from Sheba's blatantly seductive manipulations to Leo's disappointment in marriage, from magnolia-scented Charleston to the fear-riddled ambiance of San Francisco's Tenderloin, Conroy is the epitome of southern charm and lifelong angst, forever yearning for an ideal while navigating the possible, a treasure for his vision and the worlds he reveals, both bright and dark. Luan Gaines/2009.
by Pat Conroy
List Price: $29.95
Price: $16.47 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
You Save: $13.48 (45%)
Pre-order Price Guarantee
From Publishers Weekly
Charleston, S.C., gossip columnist Leopold Bloom King narrates a paean to his hometown and friends in Conroy's first novel in 14 years. In the late '60s and after his brother commits suicide, then 18-year-old Leo befriends a cross-section of the city's inhabitants: scions of Charleston aristocracy; Appalachian orphans; a black football coach's son; and an astonishingly beautiful pair of twins, Sheba and Trevor Poe, who are evading their psychotic father. The story alternates between 1969, the glorious year Leo's coterie stormed Charleston's social, sexual and racial barricades, and 1989, when Sheba, now a movie star, enlists them to find her missing gay brother in AIDS-ravaged San Francisco. Too often the not-so-witty repartee and the narrator's awed voice (he is very fond of superlatives) overwhelm the stories surrounding the group's love affairs and their struggles to protect one another from dangerous pasts. Some characters are tragically lost to the riptides of love and obsession, while others emerge from the frothy waters of sentimentality and nostalgia as exhausted as most readers are likely to be. Fans of Conroy's florid prose and earnest melodramas are in for a treat. (Aug.)
Copyright ? Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
An unlikely group of Charlestonian teens forms a friendship in 1969, just as the certainties and verities of southern society are quaked by the social and political forces unleashed earlier in the decade. They come from all walks of life, from the privileged homes of the aristocracy, from an orphanage, from a broken home where an alcoholic mother and her twins live in fear of a murderous father, from the home of public high school’s first black football coach, and from the home of the same school’s principal. The group’s fulcrum, Leopold Bloom King, second son of an ex-nun Joyce scholar, who is also the school’s principal, and a science-teacher father, is just climbing out of childhood mental illness after having discovered his handsome, popular, athletic, scholarly older brother dead from suicide. Over the next two decades, these friends find success in journalism, the bar, law enforcement, music, and Hollywood. Echoing some themes from his earlier novels, Conroy fleshes out the almost impossibly dramatic details of each of the friends’ lives in this vast, intricate story, and he reveals truths about love, lust, classism, racism, religion, and what it means to be shaped by a particular place, be it Charleston, South Carolina, or anywhere else in the U.S. --Mark Knoblauch
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Another Gift to the South, June 16, 2009
By W Ray "W Ray" (Bay County)
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.
Living breathing characters that you will care about!, June 14, 2009
By Jenny Blickman "from the block" (USA)
I was very excited to get an advance copy of "South of Broad" through a friend of the authors. Conroy has been one of my favorite authors since I read the excellent "The Prince of Tides: A Novel" Years ago. The author is one of the best at developing living breathing characters that you actually care about and can believe in.
This is the story of a diverse group of teenagers, from Charlston, SC, who form a friendship in the late 1960s having to grow up under the changes of that time period. They are a diverse group but all come from a particular place and a particular time. Over the following twenty years Conroy portrays the life and times of each of the characters in dramatic fashion. And the characters do live pretty dramatic lives from the legal profession to the music industry and Hollywood. But they all come from the same place yet with different backgrounds (the privileged to the struggling, from black and white). Within the story racism, religion, love, and lust are all explored . In the end they are all brought back together to face test none of the ever expected that will test the bonds of the friendships. Great, engaging fiction; fans of Conroy will be very pleased!
For more great character development I have to recommend Misfits CountryMarilyn Monroe and Clark Gable brought to life!
"You can walk away from anything but a wounded soul.", June 14, 2009
By Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA)
"He treated the stars as if they were love songs to him created by God." How can you resist the author of such language? He had me at the prologue. That said, much of Conroy's lengthy and vivid novel gets bogged down in distractions, but they are such elegant, imaginative distractions that it is difficult not to indulge, like a few minutes of guilty gossip. Given the variety of characters and social backgrounds, this novel is busting with larger-than-life personalities who meet during a celebration of James Joyce in 1969 and again twenty years later, when their lives have fallen into predictable paths.
The star is Leo Bloom King, whose mother is a devoted Joyce scholar, ex-nun and rigid high school principal. After the suicide of his ten year old brother, Stephen, Leo's family falls apart, never recovering from that early fatal blow, Leo's father serving as a buffer between surviving son (did the wrong one die?) and an unforgiving and unforgivable mother. 1969, the summer of Leo's eighteenth birthday, ushers in a group of new acquaintances, friends who will enrich and baffle, all dressed in the shimmering promise of youth: Trevor and Sheba Poe, extraordinarily talented twins; orphans Niles and Starla Whitehead; socialite Molly Huger and her boyfriend, a natural son of Charleston, Chadworth Rutledge X; and Ike Jefferson, son of the first black coach at Leo's high school.
Times they are a'changin'. It is the beginning of desegregation. But this is the south, where the women are beautiful, oozing charm, save one whose integrity and family afford the same social cachet; the men are more complicated, their motives less clear. The somewhat odd, but generous Leo, deeply wounded by Stephen's suicide, embraces this eclectic group, a cross-cultural marriage of poverty and wealth, prejudice and pride, all veiled in the habit of polite social discourse. Leo becomes an influential news columnist, Sheba a movie star, the others successful in their life choices, not a loser among them, until the arrival of a sinister visitor from the past.
Conroy reveals the ugly secrets and shameful histories that have haunted this group of friends as they come together in joint purpose in 1989 to extinguish the mistakes of the past and reclaim their youthful attachments. From the acerbic comments of a crotchety, lonely old gentleman to the outbursts of Leo's bitter mother, from Sheba's blatantly seductive manipulations to Leo's disappointment in marriage, from magnolia-scented Charleston to the fear-riddled ambiance of San Francisco's Tenderloin, Conroy is the epitome of southern charm and lifelong angst, forever yearning for an ideal while navigating the possible, a treasure for his vision and the worlds he reveals, both bright and dark. Luan Gaines/2009.
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