Pat Conroy is the best-selling author of The Great Santini and The Prince of Tides. South of Broad is his first published work since Beach Music, some 14 years ago.
The Story: In Charleston, South Carolina, Leopold Bloom King is a young man named, to his everlasting dismay, after the protagonist in James Joyce’s Ulysses. The emotionally fragile Leo has never recovered from his older brother’s suicide (he discovered the body in the family bathtub) and chafes under the iron will of his domineering mother, an ex-nun turned school principal. In 1969, he meets a wildly diverse group of teenagers, including a pair of runaway orphans, silver spoon siblings, sexually adventurous twins, and the son of an African American football coach, and develops friendships that will last a lifetime.
Nan A. Talese. 528 pages. $29.95. ISBN: 9780385413053
Chicago Sun-Times
"It is everything an epic novel should be: densely and compellingly plotted, populated with intriguing, complex characters and—most importantly—written in an intoxicatingly lush prose style that makes this book nearly impossible to put down. Conroy’s talent as a long-form writer calls to mind perhaps that greatest of all novelists, Charles Dickens." Lewis Lazare
Washington Post
"When I was on Page 322 … I began to feel that the characters were crying a lot, which wouldn’t have bothered me if the characters were children. … 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." Chris Bohjalian
Boston Globe
"Conroy hasn’t published a novel in 14 years and he’s a little rusty. … A number of unlikely coincidences defy the story’s logic, and too many significant events, as well as the novel’s climax and denouement, are left to occur off stage or are quickly glossed over." Jay Atkinson
Dallas Morning News
"[T]he author too often lets his infatuation with words devolve into a sort of gushy mess that threatens to derail the novel’s power. … Get past the linguistic overindulgence in which Conroy indulges, however, and you’ll find a lovely, often thrilling story." Joy Tipping
Entertainment Weekly
"I’m sad to report that I like his new work, South of Broad, not at all: It comes off as little more than a pale reworking of Prince of Tides. … The books … have so many similarities that I actually confused them at times." Tina Jordan
Los Angeles Times
"Conroy reels his teenage characters through cliché showdowns of racial and class divisions, trying to make those broad social issues the backdrop to the personal stories in the narrative. … But [he] doesn’t have anything new or interesting to say about the racial and class divides." Scott Martelle
Oregonian
"The novel is positively baroque in its excesses; the cast of characters are as unbelievable as most of the plot twists and all of the malicious repartee. … For most of South of Broad, the characters are archetypes, martyrs, harlots and quote machines, but they seem composed of screenplay material, not flesh and blood." Steve Duin
Critical Summary
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.