Rating: 
Summary: Couldn't put it down.
Review: Conroy captures the essence of the South Carolina coast like no one else. This book talks to personal responsibility, atonement, accountability, and forgiveness (and the resistance to it). I found it compelling and will reread it.
Rating: 
Summary: I can't believe I ate the whole thing
Review: Pat Conroy seems to be much more prolific than he actually is, in part because the books he writes stick to your ribs and are easy to remember.I enjoyed Beach Music immensely, but I came away with the feeling that I'd made one too many trips to the buffet. The book's overstuffed with tragedy. We have suicides, more rapes than you can shake a cookbook at, family deaths, wife-beating, child-beating, mental illness, and the Holocaust. Oops, I left out the Vietnam War. In mitigation, Conroy is beautifully eloquent, even though this novel lacks the economy of phrase of, say, The Great Santini. His descriptions, both of scenes and characters, are vivid and finely detailed, if sometimes unbelievable. Summary: get it from the library.
Rating:
Summary: Captivating!!
Review: One minute I was laughing hysterically the next, I was crying. I could not stop listening to the audio version. It is a wonderful example of storytelling. Peter MacNichol captured your attention the entire time you are listening to the audio version. He is an excellent dramatical reader.
Rating:
Summary: Fabulously entertaining
Review: I have been carrying this book with me last week on the Beach in Florida and this weekend snowbound in Michigan and can't put it down! The psychology, the descriptive lines and the history lessons are all wonderfully academically challenging.
Rating:
Summary: Beach Music is my favorite all-time book.
Review: Pat Conroy uses words like no other American author. He paints pictures in your mind while making you laugh and cry throughout this beautifully written novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Flowery prose finally gets the best of Conroy
Review: A fan of Conroy's books, including "The Prince of Tides" and "The Water is Wide", I found this book to be terribly disappointing. Though I admire his ability in previous works to mold sentences that beautifully tell of his southern homeland and the characters within it, his flowery prose runs wild here. Certain passages, though describing a depressing chain of events, are downright laughable. Gay Talese's editing contributes to a lack of continuity and plausibility, resulting in a work that is maudlin and hackneyed to the fullist. Check out other Conroy...this is definately his worst.
Rating:
Summary: Emotionally on-target even if too ambitious
Review: Pat Conroy's command of the language is currently unrivaled in popular literature and his deft use of simile and metaphor is once again in full lyrical motion in Beach Music. Having said that, I must admit that Beach Music covers way too many bases. Weaving spousal suicide, life in Rome, single parenthood, Southern folklore, the Russian Revolution, rape, the Holocaust, rape (again), battered wives, drunken husbands, immolation, orphanages, rape (again - but of a child), immolation (again), terrorist attacks, Catholic hang-ups, Jesuit spies, Jewish hang-ups, and movie producers (not to mention his trademark evil Marine father and patented exclusion of all but the most beautfiul of women) into a novel (much less this sentence) is usually deadly. What makes it not only tolerable (except for the totally unbelievable mock trial) but also brilliant is the dead-on conveyance of the emotional life of a messed up American family. It's hard to explain to those who haven't lived it but I think Conroy comes about as close as any American author to doing so. He doesn't portray a rotten childhood as an excuse for his characters' actions but he does demonstrate that it is a perfectly logical explanation for them. Spending eighteen years having your brain conditioned to think and do certain things by drunken louts or angry victims is not something people can just "get over" and I think the Holocaust storyline illustrates abusive mental conditioning at its most awful depths. I was stunned by Conroy's accuracy yet heartened by my identification with him.
Rating:
Summary: Beach Music captures you immediately!!!!
Review: This book is EXCELLENT. Not once did I want to put the book down. I took it everywhere and read it every chance I got. I was hooked. I put myself in the story line many times. I, like many others never wanted the book to end. I reccommend this book to anyone. Trust me, read this book you won't regret it!!
Rating:
Summary: Beach Music will remain a life-long favorite!
Review: Few books are as capable of capturing and holding the readers imagination long after the book has been completed and replaced upon the shelf. Beach Music is one of those rare books. Pat Conroy is one of my all-time favorite authors. It is utterly amazing to me that a man who attended and graduated from the Citadel could possibly be so intune with humanity, nature and emotion. Buy Beach Music in paperback.... read it.... pass it on to your friends.. Then buy a hardback copy for your home library. You will not regret it!! It touches the heart and warms the soul!!
Rating:
Summary: Captivating
Review: I am a sophomore in college and was assigned to read this book for my Introduction to Literature class. When I first saw the length of the book, I dreaded reading it. But as soon as I read the first paragraph, I was hooked. I couldn't put the book down and read it at every chance I got. I even found myself purposely reading ahead of the class assignment just so what we talked about in class would not tell me what happened before I got to it. I laughed and I cried. This book had every element of a good story and more. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is up for a good novel!
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