Beach Music

Rating:
Summary: It's not the worst book I ever read, but it's close.
Review: What a disappointment. Apparently Pat Conroy made so much money on the movie rights to "The Prince of Tides" he decided a collection of melodramatic scenes would suffice for a novel this time around. Too bad. I've always thought Conroy a fine story-teller and competent writer, but he fills neither role in "Beach Music". I can hardly believe it, but he actually takes the angst and passion of some of modern history's most compelling events - the Viet Nam war and the Holocaust - and puts them into a script-masquerading-as-a-story that is ultimately silly. Silly - what a terrible word to have to apply to this...

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding if you have the life experiences
Review: This book was right on, I could relate to the sixties-seventies era struggles, the tongue in cheek look at an average struggling family. Conroy paints a very vivid picture with his writing. I would definitely read another of his books

Rating:
Summary: Trite crud for Danielle Steele fans.
Review: I should have known better. It was at the top of the New York Times best seller list. I guess when you appeal to that many people, you have to shoot for the lowest common denominator. More cliche-ridden than an Oliver Stone movie. An unfortunate waste of time

Rating:
Summary: I have never been so disappointed with a book in my life.
Review: I have been an enormous fan of Conroy's for over ten years, falling in love with his novels and with his philosophies. Unfortunately, Conroy's latest and long awaited novel fails miserably at every attempt. Conroy appears to be trying too hard to excel at every aspect of writing, from description to prose to characterization, but his aim is for once beyond his reach. His characters are completely unbelievable; Conroy has forgotten the merit of allowing his protagonists to be humanly flawed, an ability he has always demonstrated with his unforgettable Bull Meechums and Tom Wingos. His prose, while beautiful in places, becomes too self-enamoured and loses its power through its over-addiction to adjectives and adverbs. The scope of the novel is far too wide as Conroy tries to cram everything from the Holocaust to Vietnam to a murder mystery, a cancer death, and an embittered expatriot struggling to overcome his wife's suicide. It is a book that exhausts without rewarding its reader, and you are left in the final third of the book with the dread of what emotional strings Conroy will next try to pull. What could be stunning in portence and pertinence is undone by its own grandiose despair. Save your money on this one and return to Conroy's glory days of The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, and the incomparable Prince of Tides.

Rating:
Summary: The best modern American fiction writing.
Review: This extraordinary novel is about real-sounding complex people, their emotional isolation and intertwined histories. Each chapter skillfully brings an answer to a question raised earlier, and subtly plants seeds for later chapters. The pacing is perfect. The words flow. The main character's mother is clearly a sister of the mother in "Prince of Tides", and the father a close relative of that father. Only the daughter isn't 3-dimensional, but serves as an acceptable vehicle to make "Beach Music" work logistically. The rich descriptions of the country's emotional responses to the Vietnam war, of a survivor's life after becomming numb to living in a Nazi concentration camp, of modern terrorism, of the soon-to-become-extinct small town life in the South, of the effects on a family when a loved-and- hated parent dies too young, of mental illnesses, and of child neglect and abuse are vivid and real. The fishing trip chapter is an "Old Man and the Sea" classic story all by itself. The glimpses into homes and bedrooms of husbands and wives who do and others who don't care for each other ring true. The pictures of childhood friendships that survive into adulthood, family bonds, love for nature and children and other small creatures, good food, warmth, sexuality, spirituality, and the twists and turns of everyday life are painted with truth and delicacy. Conroy's best book (so far) shows a perspective of intelligence and understanding throughout. His technique is beautiful. Like other world class performers, Conroy makes it look easy, but it must have been excruciatingly difficult to write this finely-tuned, beautifully constructed page turner. Intellectual, emotional, and provocative, the only very minor flaws are those needed to avoid perfection. Each Conroy novel is better than the last, and the first was pretty darn good.

Rating:
Summary: SUPERB READING, EXCELLANT STORY
Review: GET CAUGHT UP IN RICHLY DEFINED CHARACTERS THAT WILL MAKE YOU LAUGH AND CRY AND SWELL WITH ANTICIPATOIN OF THEIR EVERY WORD

Rating:
Summary: A must read book. Strong, Visual, Intelligent - Art
Review: "She had camouflaged the vinegar factory in her character with a great honeycomb along the sills and porches of her public self." Pat Conroy, Beach Music,.........I strongly recommend this as an excellent "must read" book. Beach Music is one of those rare finds where great literature meets or exceeds the soul stirring that many regard as the exclusive property of great painting or great music or a perfect sunset... in other words, great Art."

Rating:
Summary: Moving mix of (very) troubled Southern family & Holocaust
Review: Conroy's emotional depth seems to keep attacking (or drawing tears throughout the book. The resilence and depth of the women especially Lucy was fascinating. Perhaps my strongest reaction was to the narration of Holocaust experiences by the Foxes. The subtlety of Conroy's ear seems as strong for his Jewish characters as it was for his Southern ones. I do not recall anything comparable to his narration in the voice of George Fox of the depths of pain felt by an ex Judenrat. It is very difficult to imagine a memoir written in that manner by one who was. I wonder whether Conroy's informants, so graciously credited in the foreward, included anyone of this experience, or whether Conroy created it. In a story otherwise seeming most authentic, the SDS scenes seemed quite contrived.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, lyrical story
Review: I almost didn't buy this book as Conroy is typically too wordy for me. But I fell in love with this book so quickly - and so completely - that I felt changed. As I read constantly, this is a new effect on me. Please don't pass on this book - you will regret it if you do

Rating:
Summary: An enthralling story that I could not put down.
Review: I am a huge Pat Conroy fan. I enjoyed Beach Music and appreciated that the reader was taken to another time period and country. Refreshing to leave the South! Conroy's characters always seem so familiar to those of us who have been raised in the South. I recommend this book to new and old Conroy fans