Conroy Goes South

The first time I read a Pat Conroy book was a conversion experience as stunning as being knocked off a horse. It was on a plane, at the end of another exhausting school year teaching English, and I would have been happy to be reading sheer drivel as long as I didn't have to either grade it or make up a test on it. But the gods of reading must have decided that I deserved a reward, and they guided my hand to The Prince of Tides in the airport bookstore. I devoured it, named it the best book ever written, and went on to Conroy's earlier novels, The Lords of Discipline, The Great Santini, and The Water Is Wide. All were dramatic stories (some would say melodramatic; I'll say Southern) about passionate, wounded people spewing dialogue that could move me to tears or make me laugh out loud, often in the same scene. The settings were brought to life with some of the most gorgeous language I'd ever read. Conroy became my religion. I taught his books, I followed his trail to bookstores and lecture halls, I wrote him fan letters. I sat at the kitchen table with my daughter weeping over passages of tragic beauty. I insisted all my friends read him, and I insisted they love him as much as I did.

After those first four books there was a lull during which we Conroy acolytes held our collective breath in anticipation of his next book, which turned out to be Beach Music. It was a long exhale, ending in silence. A good book, but one that tried too hard and told too many stories, losing its momentum along the way. I can recite whole passages of those first four books, but Beach Music is a blur.