Rating: 
Summary: Absorbing and passionate
Review: Beach Music captures you from the first chapter. Although the story can become very sad and tragic, the characters seem to rise above it all. It was very optimistic in that Leah, Jack's child, will benefit by the experience of all those around her. It is promising that she will be a human being full of love, acceptance, and with a respect for all living things. Beach Music is very inspiring. We should all learn from it.
Rating: 
Summary: Finally, I got to the last page
Review: OK. A lady at work said I HAD to read Beach Music. So I did. But, altho it had its moments, it was hammy, and it did manipulate my emotions, or at least try to. The bit about getting naked for the wacko brother? Give me a break! And claiming classic rock as Southern "Beach Music" - go blow it out yer ass - most of that music belongs to So Cal!!! Rednecks do Country, plain and simple.And the brothers taking turns dancing with their prodigal niece, choke choke. The ending was touching, I grant you, but getting there was a painful experience. Larry 'Possum' Ronnow.
Rating: 
Summary: I couldn't put it down, it was great!
Review: This book was just like The Prince of Tides. I couldn't put it down, it cast a spell on me to keep reading. I wanted to just keep going and never stop, and I am glad that it turned out to be such a great book. It was like a catharsis, you laughed, cried, everything, it was wonderful! I've passed it around so many times, I had to get another copy, everyone loves it!
Rating:
Summary: Amazing!!!
Review: I have no idea who has my paperback copy of this book right now. For the past two years it has been passed from person to person so I am about to buy the hardback copy to keep in my library. I never wanted this book to end!!! Wanted to continue to know these characters and what would happen next in their lives. The telling of the relationship between the brothers and the dialogue between them came across both realisticly and compelling. You will laugh, cry and the whole gamut of emotions between. Pat Conroy at his finest.
Rating:
Summary: A Big Southern Extravagaza
Review: If you like over-heated, big-scale Southern Gothic melodrama, then this book is for you. Conroy's writing is as beautiful as always, although at times he just goes overboard. I like this type of book because it's a catharsis, expressing things many people are reluctant to talk about. A worthy read if you have some time on your hands and don't mind being pulled into an emotional undertow.
Rating: 
Summary: "Beach Music" As Tedious As A Broken Record
Review: Pat Conroy's "Beach Music" is as off-key as The Three Tenors singing country-western. Tediously long and pretentiously ambitious, the book never gets going, even with 800 pages in which to do so. Protagonist Jack McCall is flat, boring, self-pitying and just plain unlikable. His only redeeming quality is that his family, with its drunken father, mentally ill youngest brother and assorted other cliche characters, is even more mundane. Conroy can't resist tossing in every subplot and family tale of woe, as though he was being paid by the word. By the time readers realize they're wasting their time, it's too late; you're 500 pages into it and assume it has to get better and some point. Well, save yourself some grief. It doesn't. A copy editor might have done some good; plot gaps, wooden dialogue and interminable set pieces lard "Beach Music" with more extra heft than a tub of Crisco. Still, even at half the length, you'd still be left with a boo! k that is as prosaic as the interior monologue of its characters.
Rating:
Summary: The most moving book I've ever read!!!!
Review: Yes it is long and well worth it. The range of characters is incredible and each one so well developed. I applaud Mr. Conroy for his vivid descriptions of how people from drastically different backgrounds with deep rooted scars from the past can so carefully be intertwined in a beautiful story. Truly page turning.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful, a can't put down book
Review: I found this book to be a great book to read. Once I started it, I didn't put it down until I was finished. I sent it to my Dad to read, and recomended it to all of my friends. It was the one book that got me to enjoy reading again.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, but a bit long
Review: One of the finest reads ever but, after 500 pages down and 300 to go, I was ready to drive to Charleston and throw the book over the bridge from which Shyla leapt. However, I'm afraid of heights and, since the book was heavy enough to kill a whale if it hit him on the head, I decided to just finish it. It was a richly rewarding experience, but I was left with the feeling that I had read three different books rolled into one. The material relating to the holocaust could have been incorporated into one standalone book, the story of Jack and his friends would have made a great vacation read, and the story of Jack and his family would have been a wonderful third book. Beach Music is a good thing, but too much of a good thing.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, but could have been shorter
Review: For a book that curiously begins with an error in the first sentence (the "Silas Pearlman Bridge in Charleston" is really the Silas Pearman Bridge), this is a fine read. Perhaps the change in spelling is literary license. Anyway, I loved the story but wished the descriptions of food, marshes, cities, sunsets, sunrises, so forth and so on could have been shorter. At 800 pages, even a masterpiece can be laborious. No doubt though, Conroy should be never be speed-read, just as Mozart should never be fast-played.
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