Rating: 
Summary: A beautifully written tough book about a colorful family
Review: Pat Conroy gives a whole new meaning to "dysfunctional family" in "The Prince of Tides", but his lyrical writing moves the reader along in a sea of awe and sympathy for his characters. Set on coastal South Carolina, and spanning forty years, this shrimper's family fights and claws itself toward destruction and redemption. The tangled relationships between them could seem unbelievable, but through Mr Conroy's magic the reader bonds with even the meanest characters. What a read, (and re-read)! Do not start this book if you need to get up early the next morning
Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended; much better than the movie.
Review: Excellent, lyrical writing; the author has grown from being
a good writer to an outstanding one since his books about
military school (The Boo, The Lords of Discipline), and
his love of the English language is evident in the accounts
of his character's growing up in and near a small coastal town in South Carolina. Highly recommended.
If you saw the movie before reading this book, treat yourself to a MUCH better version of a fascinating novel.
Conroy's writing is vivid and needs no big screen to set your mind to imagining the characters and scenes;
the inferior movie version inverts the the story and
places the character played by producer/actress Barbra Streisand at the center, rather than as the secondary character she portrays from the book.
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: One of the best
Review: When someone asks for a Good Book recomendation, I always reccomend either this or Lords of Discipline because they are some of the best writings I have ever read. Full of wonderful characters and amazing lyrical writing it can't be beat and never has in my opinion.
I just wish Pat Conroy would write more and I wish they would redo the movie as a miniseries so they whole book is included instead of excluding the character of Tom, a character that touches everyone yet only is referred to in the movie. The movie is only a portion of the book.
Pick it up and read it. You won't be sorry.
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