The Great Santini

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Summary: If you know you're...
Review: a civilian, you aren't one. A fine coming of age story with special appeal for military brats of all persuasions. Conroy hits the low and the high points with painful accuracy. Especially worth a read in these troubled times, if your own experience has not let you peer into the closed world of the military and their families. A good, fast read, that stands up to a second inspection. Better than the film.

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Summary: Great book!
Review: A perfect example of the family of a Marine

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Summary: Another Great Book from Pat Conroy
Review: After re-reading The Prince of Tides (a classic), I went to my "To Be Read" pile and grabbed The Great Santini. Although, it did not 'capture' me in the way The Prince of Tides did, it is definitely a great read. Pat Conroy once again, through his lyrical words, proves what a great writer and story-teller he is. The Great Santini is a powerful story about military life and a very complex father/son relationship. I both loved and hated Colonel Bull Meecham (who is the Great Santini). I have spent over 20 years as a military wife and Conroy really "knows his stuff" as he tells the story of the complexities of a military family. Bull is a typical military officer who finds it difficult to separate the way he behaves on duty from the way he behaves as a husband and father. He wants and tries to run his family life in the disciplined, hard-fashioned way he commands his "troops." Lillian is his devoted wife who plays the "role" of a military wife perfectly (I found her relationship with her son very touching--the letter she wrote him on his 16th birthday is a tear-jerker). Ben is Santini's son who is coming to terms with life as an adolescent and his feelings about his father; he is an extremely well written character who I grew to feel sorry for and admire at the same time. Maryann as Santini's sarcastic, wise-cracking daughter was my favorite character who has her own unique way of dealing with her father that makes the reader laugh out loud but, at the same time, realize how much she is hurting and craving his love and attention. It is a great story of the very good and also the very, very bad times of the Meecham family. It is funny, touching, emotional, sad--it has everything!! I highly recommend The Great Santini or any of Pat Conroy's books. He is the best!!

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Summary: More autobiographical than you will know...
Review: All of Pat Conroy's books have one foot in his childhood, and none is more autobiographical than The Great Santini. Colonel Bull Meecham is a legendary Marine fighter pilot whose military successes are almost as many as his personal excesses. Lillian Meecham is a Southern gentlewoman with a love of literature. After moving from base to base each year, the Meecham's finally settle down in fictional Ravenel, SC (Beaufort in real life).

The Colonel rules his fighter squadron and his family with an iron first. While this technique is successful in motivating his pilots, it has disastrous effects on his wife and children. His cruelty (both mental and physical) is enough to crush even the strongest soul. While he chides Ben for being a sissy, he suppresses Ben's attempts to act like a man. Yet, the Colonel can do endearing things, like when he gives Ben his original flight jacket on his 18th birthday. No wonder Ben has a love-hate relationship with his old man.

At a new school, Ben quickly establishes himself as a decent scholar and a talented basketball player. Several teachers and his principal see the potential in young Ben, and give him the love and mentoring he could never get from the Colonel. They teach him the importance of standing up for what he believes and to be his own man. When one of Ben's friends is threatened, Ben defies his dad and goes to his aid. In doing so, he becomes more of a man than his father will ever be.

The Great Santini is a fabulous story, and nobody writes with as much passion and beauty as Pat Conroy. Conroy takes us through the emotional gamut from belly laughs to tears and back again. Although some parts of the story are fiction, there is enough truth in that when Conroy's mom filed for divorce from the real Colonel after 33 years of marriage, she handed a copy of The Great Santini to the judge as evidence of the Colonel's violent nature. Conroy is a definitely success story and despite many scars, he was able to overcome his tumultuous upbringing to become the very successful writer he is. But perhaps without that childhood, we would not know the Conroy we know today. Even he admits that "one of the greatest gifts you can get as a writer is to be born into an unhappy family."


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Summary: The Great Santini
Review: Although I am quite taken with Pat Conroy, I was not particularly fond of this book. The characters were not believable enough to develop feelings for and Bull Meecham was not a likeable character at all. I love the descriptive "poetry" he uses in his novels, though. Many other readers seem to love this book- maybe it's a military family thing.

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Summary: Thoughtful, powerful book about family dynamics
Review: As a military brat I have surprised myself by finding ways to avoid this book over the years. I have enjoyed Mr. Conroy's other novels but for some reason assumed that the life of a military family would not interest me because I had already lived that life. I could not have been more wrong. This book was amazing. The character development was intense, the action compelling and the flow wonderful. Please pick up this book.

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Summary: A Conroy Classic
Review: Conroy is the best of the best. Theres no better author at writing gut wrenching, heart stomping, laughter filled family sagas rich with strong appealing characters that you love to detest. This is not my favorite Conroy masterpiece, but I do believe it is the best. The characters in this story are like no other you will ever read. You will learn to hate certain charecters, yet at the same time you cant help loving them. I am utterly jealous of anyone who gets to read this book for the first time. If only I could go back in time........ Its that good!

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Summary: Scarlett O'Hara and the Beast of Ravenel
Review: From what Pat Conroy has said in numerous interviews, it is obvious that his novel The Great Santini is a thinly disguised autobiographical account of his own childhood as a Marine brat. High school senior Ben Meecham, Pat Conroy's fictional counterpart, is the son of a volatile Marine fighter pilot 'Bull' Meecham, whose nom de guerre is 'The Great Santini', which, by the way, was also Pat Conroy dad's nom de guerre in real life. Pat Conroy once said that his dad was Zeus and his mom was Hera, and that his first memory was of his dad laughing and hitting his mother in face while she tried to stab him with a knife. Boy, oh boy, if this novel is an accurate representation of what went on in the Conroy household, then he is right about the true identity of his parents! The Great Santini acts, according to his wife Lillian, like a living, breathing Marine recruitment poster. Santini is a man of contradictions, a man who loves his wife and his children more than anything else in the world, but you wouldn't know it from the brutal manner by which he occasionally treats them. By the way, if you saw the wonderful film adaptation of Conroy's novel, you were probably left with the impression that Santini is the only parent in this household that is screwed up. Unlike the movie version, in the novel Santini's wife Lillian, who means well, is in her own way just as screwed up as her husband. Like Santini, Lillian also loves her children more than anything in the world, but she often acts like a demented Scarlett O'Hara. (Indeed, part of the tension between Santini and his wife comes from the fact that she is a Southern Belle who loves her cultural roots, while Santini is a purposely uncouth Yankee from Chicago who despises everything Southern.) Lillian is especially dysfunctional when it comes to teaching gender roles to her daughters. Just as Santini is one extreme with his sons Ben and Matt, wanting them to grow up to be stoic, hard marines who can unmercifully kill America's enemies, Lillian Meecham puts her oldest daughter Mary Anne through hell basically because Mary Anne is a Plain Jane nonconformist who won't conform to her mother's dictum that a woman is like a flower, pretty but silent and modest, while Mary Anne's pretty younger sister Karen does accept her mother's vision of womanhood. Lillian's ideal vision of how a woman should act is ironic because under her soft Southern Belle persona, Santini's wife is woman of steel whose temper is often as fiery and violent as her husband's.

A lot happens action wise in this novel, some of it horrifying, some of it hilarious, but The Great Santini doesn't have an overly obvious narrative drive per se. Instead, the questions that drive the plot of this amazing novel are more subtle: Will Santini be successful in his first command at the Marine base in Ravenel? Will Ben and Mary Anne be successful in their bid to fit in at their new high school? (Like Conroy's "The Lords of Discipline", the action of TGS takes place within the space of a school year.) Now that the Great Santini has come home from his year living overseas without his family, will the Meecham family have a better year together this time, or will their family situation become abusive again like in the past? I guess you could argue that The Great Santini is more character-driven than plot-driven, although it's not necessarily easy to make a distinction between the two since action often reveals character. The Great Santini is a fascinating portrayal of how even an extremely dysfunctional family can still love each other, and how a child can love a parent who occasionally causes them great pain. Five stars.


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Summary: Good intentions but the characters fall short
Review: Good intentions but the characters fall short. The book is full of important life lessons. The problem is the people learning them are unrealistic. First, the oldest, Ben, for a seventeen/eighteen year old he's very immature. When you read the book it'll be obvious to you, the reader, what I mean about Ben's immaturity. The second oldest, Mary Anne, is smarter but too cynical to pity. She gets herself and Ben in trouble so many times with her cynicism that the reader can't believe she wouldn't have learned her lesson after the 100th time. I don't have many gripes about the other kids because they acted their age while Ben and Mary Anne acted their age too.

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Summary: Surprisingly Good
Review: I decided to read this book on a bit of a whim. We were vacationing on Hilton Head, near Conroy's hometown, and I wanted to become better acquainted with this talented author's work while in his neck of the woods. I'd just finished reading "The Prince of Tides," which was a little disappointing (not bad, mind you, just different than I'd expected.). Of the two, I actually preferred "The Great Santini." This book, the tale of a Marine family temporarily based in South Carolina in the early 1960s, was both warm and bittersweet. The descriptions of the setting were dead on, just as one would expect it would be since it's situated in the author's home state. (BTW - the movie was filmed in Beaufort, S.C. - a real treat of a destination.) Be advised that there are troubling moments of family conflict, including domestic violence. But what is so compelling is the way that the reader becomes drawn to all of the family members -- even to bellicose Bull, the father. Particularly memorable is a chapter toward the end when Bull is flying through the night sky. It is one of the most moving and heartwrenching passages that I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Even if you've already seen the movie, you'll find this a worthy read.