Rating: 
Summary: Great Read!!!!
Review: After reading Conroy's memoir, I was in search to search of his fiction. I picked up The Prince of Tides and was once again completely impressed. Conroy's language is just so amazing, funny, yet serious, and just so easy to read.
The story is very grabbing as you go through the entire history of Tom Wingo's tragic, and unsual family. Conroy easily shifts from past to present, never the least bit confusing.
One of the greatest things is this story has something for everybody. Sports, a love story, family, crime, and what story is complete without guerrila warfare. Read this book. Sit back, and enjoy.
Rating: 
Summary: How to cure Savannah?
Review: As non-native english speaker, I'm amused with so many new phrases and words brought by Pat Conroy into this novel.
The Wingos family life style is hillarious and tragic at the same time. The way Pat Conroy described the chronicle of the Wingos life is uncomparable.
But at the end, as a reader, I don't know how Dr. Lowenstein to cure Savannah psychological problem. Probably, because this is not a psychological book anyway.
Rating:
Summary: Gorgeous literature
Review: I've read this piece of "flawed, outrageous humanity" no less than a hundred times, and have yet to find anything more truly gorgeous, more terrible, more moving, or more hilarious. Pat Conroy chooses the most beautiful words of the English language and strings them together like jewels; the story crafts the lovely as well as the hideous. Mr. Conroy tells a story that is so engaging that it is nearly impossible to stop reading. Somehow this book is especially appealing to those people whose families and backgrounds are less than perfect-yet even these people are able to find something to identify with in this book. I would recommend this to anyone over 18, due to some mature subjects. If you like short stories, you'll love this book--it's a compilation of them. If you like novels, I've never read anything so accessible yet so challenging. If you think your life was hard, read this book. If you love beauty, poetry, nature, words, literature, or the south, read this. Mr. Conroy's other books are also several notches above excellent. PS-skip the movie. I've only ever seen one movie that was as good as the book, and this wasn't it.
Rating:
Summary: Conroy's best...
Review: In Pat Conroy's masterpiece, The Prince of Tides, not much is going right in Tom Wingo's life. He drinks too much, has lost his teaching/coaching job, and his marriage is on the rocks. He grew up with an abusive father whose violent behavior left physical and emotional scars on all the Wingo children. His mother was more supportive, but was powerless to protect her children from her husband's wrath. She also put her social ambitions before anything else in her life. The only that has gone right in Tom's life is that he lived his entire life in the low country of Charleston, SC--one of the most beautiful and nurturing places on this earth.
Things come to a head when Tom learns that his beautiful and talented twin, Savannah, has tried to commit suicide again. As she lays comatose in a New York City mental hospital, Savannah's psychiatrist, Susan Lowenstein, urges Tom to travel to New York. Doctor Lowenstein realizes that the only thing that can help save Savannah is to unlock the secrets of her terrible childhood (something that all the Wingo children have long suppressed and refuse to talk about). Tom flies to New York reluctantly, and at first, presents Dr. Lowenstein with a façade made up of humor, sarcasm and even rudeness. But Dr. Lowenstein eventually is able to break down Tom's protective shell to discover the horrors that took place during the Wingo's childhood. She also realizes that in trying to save Savannah, that this might also be Tom's last chance to save himself. But it turns out that Lowenstein has erected her own protective mask to hide her own unhappiness. With a remote husband and a spoiled son, Tom is able to turn the tables and help the good doctor in promoting a little self-healing as well.
The Prince of Tides is my favorite of all fiction books, and one of the most moving and emotional novels I have read. I think Conroy is one of our best living authors, and his words seem more like music than the written word. For those that know Conroy's background (including his own abusive father), it is disturbing to realize that much of this story is autobiographical in nature. I watched the movie after reading the book, and while the movie was quite good (especially the actors including Barbra Streisand, Nick Nolte and Blythe Danner), the movie can't hold a candle to the novel. Major storylines had to be left out and the plot greatly simplified.
If you can only read one Conroy, make The Prince of Tides your choice.
Rating: 
Summary: A waste of EVERYONE'S energies.
Review: Slipping and sliding. Stuck in the same place, High and Mighty, lower, flaccid. I remember reading this. But what is memory? I think of it as the water washing against the reeds over and over. What are these reeds I speak of? Collective unconcious, and shared experience. It is One long floaty, weighty story. It is loose and fragile. Savannah, will you speak to me?! Can't Mother be nicer? I remember being hurt and it hurts; the pain slick as a porpoise's tail. A better 600 plus pages Finnegans Wake is. The excitement of not knowing, knowing brings more pain, like being born. Air, sun and water into dead tree pulp (mea MAXIMA culpa), essential inks. They're still dead and I am Dying. My arms ironed, lifting a book of mud in vain. Lizst. Schlitz. Leibestraum: A body dream. Blah blah-blah blah blah blah....
Rating:
Summary: A Prince of a Writer
Review: Someone suggested I read PRINCE because, "Conroy writes prose like poetry."
That person was correct.
Rating: 
Summary: Highs and Lows
Review: These 664 pages span about 40 years in the life of Tom Wingo, as he tries to understand why his sister Savannah has attempted suicide again. Absorbing at times, while boring at other times. (B+)
Rating:
Summary: GREAT READ! MUST READ!
Review: This book is just fantastic is just about every way. Conroy used to teach at my school and his children went there which is the reason that I picked up the book in the first place. Many of the places he writes about in South Carolina will be familiar to those who live in the South and are so impressively described. Pat Conroy does not get enough credit for his superb writing. Please take a few hours out of your life for a magnificent read that will have you thinking for many weeks. I could not put the book down and I read it in under a week. The book is so jammed packed with incredible imagery and fascinating stories that it should be required reading at every school around the country.
Rating:
Summary: A Hazy Kind of Beauty
Review: This is the first Conroy book that I have read. His writing style is unparalleled. While the plot of the book maybe a bit depressing for some, the skill with which Conroy crafts his phrases is amazing. As I read, I turned down the pages of passages that touched me...and by the end there were more pages turned down than not...
I highly recommend this book, for southerners and Yankees alike.
Rating:
Summary: A magnificent and captivating novel
Review: When I first read this magnificent book, I couldn't put it down because it always kept me yearning for more. I loved the story from the very beginning to the very end and the way that Pat Conroy wrote with so many different emotions, it really made me feel like I was there experiencing and observing everything that was happening on Melrose Island, South Carolina. This fascinating novel of love, abuse, humor, rape, and the ultimate struggle through life is about the very dysfunctional Wingo family and their experiences throughout life. Tom Wingo, the protagonist and narrator of the story, retold his life in the South with so much feeling and depth that I could not resist but to have empathy for his character. With his father, Henry Wingo, physically and mentally abusing the family, his grandmother, Lila and the amusing part in the story when she was pretending to be dead in the coffin, the most powerful scene in the novel which is a big part of the reason why Savannah is mentally ill, and Tom's constant effort to find peace with his past all showcase that this book is a must read for anyone and everyone who desires the beauty of life's lessons. Despite the length of the book, The Prince of Tides is definitely one that you can't put down after you have picked it up because it will captivate your every emotion and keep you guessing how the story will conclude. I ultimately recommend this book to everyone who enjoys being able to relate to what he or she reads and at the end learning from these experiences and knowing that even though we all go through hardships, life goes on. Please pick up a copy because I guarantee you will not be unsatisfied!
|
