Product 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

• Amazon Sales Rank: #125 in Books
• Published on: 2009-08-11
• Released on: 2009-08-11
• Format: Deckle Edge
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 528 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780385413053
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

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 The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Chris Bohjalian When I was on Page 322 of Pat Conroy's 514-page new novel, "South of Broad," I began to feel that the characters were crying a lot, which wouldn't have bothered me if the characters were children. They're not. So, I began noting in the margins each time an adult let loose with the waterworks. The finding? Characters cry, sob, tear, weep, wail and well up on the following pages: 322, 330, 340, 354, 367, 382, 393, 395, 396, 403, 418, 419, 420, 429, 439, 440, 444, 448 (twice), 452, 462, 463, 465, 466, 467, 477, 490 (twice) and 493. In addition to the main players in the novel, Meryl Streep is tearful on Page 447 and God weeps on Page 476. Bear in mind, these are only the tears I tracked in the last 200 pages of the tale. Hurricane Hugo, the storm that ravaged Charleston, S.C., in 1989 and figures prominently in the novel's final pages, might not have dumped quite as much water on the city as Conroy's characters. It's possible that the sobbing and sniveling occasionally felt inauthentic to me because I am a priggish New Englander who is uncomfortable with what may be a Southern penchant for drama. But as a novelist, I know all too well that there are few easier ways to wrest sniffles from a reader than to have a couple of real men cry like babies in each other's arms or a good woman stoically sniff back her tears. Been there, done that. In all fairness, "South of Broad" is a big sweeping novel of friendship and marriage -- and, perhaps, vintage Pat Conroy. In other words, a lot of that crying is justified. The tale begins on June 16, 1969, when high school junior Leopold Bloom King is asked by his mother, the school principal, to befriend some students who will be starting there the following September. That day he meets the companions he will take into adulthood: dirt-poor brother and sister orphans, Starla and Niles Whitehead, who are handcuffed to chairs; preternaturally charismatic twins Sheba and Trevor Poe; aristocratic brother and sister Chad and Fraser Rutledge, Carolinians of impeccable breeding; Chad's equally patrician girlfriend, Molly Huger; and Ike Jefferson, among the first African Americans to be integrated into the public school. They will all become the greatest of friends, class and race lines becoming irrelevant except as good-natured ribbing. As adults, Leo will marry Starla, Chad will marry Molly and Niles will marry Fraser. (Fans of the classic TV sitcom "Frasier" are going to pause on the title of Chapter 12. I know I did.) Sheba will go to Hollywood and become a movie star with a mouth like a sewer and the sort of libido that men always want in their women, while Trevor will go to San Francisco where he will become the toast of the gay community until he winds up HIV-positive. It would be impossible to summarize all that occurs to the group in this space, but suffice to say their adventures are extensive and, often enough, tear-jerking. They win (and lose) big football games, they venture to San Francisco to retrieve Trevor when he is ill, they try to protect themselves from Sheba and Trevor's psychotic killer of a father. Leo frets over his estranged wife, a woman damaged beyond repair by her childhood as an orphan. And then there's that hurricane. Meanwhile, adding a penumbra of sadness to Leo's story is the suicide of his elder brother. Leo was only 8 when he found his brother, "his arteries severed, dead in the bathtub we both shared, my father's straight razor on the tiles of our bathroom floor." Leo will spend a large chunk of his childhood first in mental institutions and then taking the fall for a crime he didn't commit. Much is made of the idea that Leo's mother has named him after James Joyce's Leopold Bloom and all of these friends find each other on the very day when Joyce's "Ulysses" is set. But "South of Broad" seems to be a reworking of the Joyce masterpiece only in that Leo learns "the power of accident and magic in human affairs . . . the unanswerable powers of fate, and how one day can shift the course of ten thousand lives." I should note that even though I felt stage-managed by Conroy's heavy hand, I still turned the pages with relish. Conroy is an immensely gifted stylist, and there are passages in the novel that are lush and beautiful and precise. No one can describe a tide or a sunset with his lyricism and exactitude. My sense is that the millions of readers who cherish Conroy's work won't be at all disappointed -- and nor will anyone who owns stock in Kleenex.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Pat Conroy's highly anticipated work earned a decidedly lackluster response from critics, who cited overblown prose, cardboard characters, and implausible plot twists among the novel's key sins. The Dallas Morning News quite candidly noted: "[H]e goes on and on—and on—about the glories of Charleston, S.C., to the point that many readers will be tempted to hurl the book into the nearest vessel of water." But the news wasn't all bad. The Chicago Sun-Times hailed the novel as "a gripping saga," and even disappointed critics, many of them longtime Conroy fans, admitted the 500-plus page novel contained moments of glorious storytelling. Overall, however, readers may find their time better spent rereading Conroy's beloved The Prince of Tides.

Customer Reviews

Another Gift to the South

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.

I was excited to read this book, then very disappointed

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.

The Big Chill--on acid
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 are 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. That is 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 in the world. 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. And we learn just how incestuous this 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 what the author may be working through. Nonetheless, though revisiting a lot of territory, Conroy jumbles things up in new and interesting ways.

I had a very 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 usually think better of Pat Conroy. Some of the language exhibits his renowned lyricism, but much of the dialog is cringe-worthy. Each of these characters attempts to be more witty and glib than the next. Their dialog 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 truly 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 rang false. 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.