Rating: 
Summary: Life inside the fortress...
Review: Nobody has wrung more novels from a dysfunctional family than Pat Conroy. In The Great Santinti he opens a window which may give a new and unexpected view to many Americans, into the family life of a career military man. For those who have never lived within the military, this book may seem bizarre and contrived. For those of us who did, it hits a nerve - even for those of us whose father was not an abusive borderline alcoholic fighter pilot. The sense of rootlessness, of being disconnected from the rest of society is here. Military families live in a strange semisubmerged culture invisible to the mainstream, and with the ending of the draft we have a generation of Americans who have never served and thus the gap has widened. The only friendships we form are with other military people, for civilians, even in the towns outside the main gate, are partially alien and can never be part of the community. Conroy captures this, and superimposes upon it the additional strains imposed by the father's domineering, macho, iron willed personality. Face it, he's not Gerald McRaney from Major Dad. No trying to understand the fears and dreams of his family, we do it by the book, my way or no way, sir, yes sir!!! There is stress between Colonel Santini and his neurotic southern belle wife, who wants to ensure her children grow up with a gentle appreciation for life, with his son who wants desperately to please his father but to do it by following his own path, and with his intelligent but socially awkward daughter who being a mere girl is not qualified for the warrior life and thus doesn't count. The military life is hard enough, throwing in these problems on top of it makes you wonder at the limits we accept in everyday life. Hard edged, disorienting, sometimes ugly, this book is for all veterans of the Cold War, active duty or dependents, who lived with the possibility that the head of the family might be called upon to go off and die in someplace most of us couldn't locate on a globe (as an aside I find that former military brats are much better at geography than most others - for one thing we got letters from all those exotic locales)... Admiral Hyman Rickover once said military officers should be like a caste of warrior priests... this novel is about that caste and the acolytes who also served. Pat Conroy once wrote elsewhere to the effect that his father's job was to be a fighter pilot, and his family's job was to provide that fighter pilot whenever the govenrment called for him.
Rating:
Summary: An entertaining book
Review: This book was highly entertaining, with a great character that you'll never forget. This book was never boring, and makes you care about the characters. But my only problem was that it was way predictable. I can't give away what happens, but it in my opinion, it was way too predictable. This is a good book to read while on vacation.
Rating:
Summary: The Great Santini
Review: I thought the Great Santini was a very good book which appealed to most people in very different ways. It appealed to men because of the references to military and sports. It was also though a feminist novel which women would enjoy just as much.
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Summary: Conroy draws from his own experiences to write "Santini".
Review: Pat Conroy's novel The Great Santini tells of the coming of age of Ben Meechan. Ben, the oldest son of Bull and Lillian Meechan, is a clean cut, smart athlete. Bull, the Great Santini, is a macho marine fighter pilot who is trying to relive his youth through his son Ben. Lillian is a naive southern belle who is very passionate toward her children. Ben is scared of his father and he tries to protect the rest of his family from him.
Ben moves to Ravenel, South Carolina during his junior year of high school. He makes a few friends and becomes the star basketball player. This causes a conflict with his father who is never satisfied with his son's achievements. Bull is called to go on a routine flying mission to Florida. His plane crashes and Bull is killed. At the conclusion of the novel, Ben assumes the family responsibilities formerly held by Bull.
The theme in this book is that people show their love in different ways. Bull constantly nags the children and is overly intense because he is always trying to make them better. Lillian babies the children and wants the boys to be southern gentleman because she does not want them to be like Bull. Ben and his sister, Mary Anne, argue constantly as many siblings do. After their father's death, they show their love for each other by coming together as a family. Mr. Dacus, Ben's principal and basketball coach, is aware of Ben's situation at home. He becomes protective of Ben and later has to tell Ben about his father's death.
The main strength in this book is the great amount of detail. An example of this is,"...sleeping as the car rolled through vast wilderness and untransmissible lights." The characterization was also a strength. It is obvious that Bull is very stern when the author says, "His voice could quiet a bar full of drunks during a fight." Sammy, Ben's best friend, showed his insecurity by usually telling his dates a false name. There were so many strengths in this book that any weaknesses would go unnoticed.
The novel The Great Santini, by Pat Conroy, depicts the adolescent life of Ben Meechan as though the reader were part of the story. It is easy to understand the life that a Marine family must endure; the constant moving, having to always make new friends and the fear of your father never returning from a mission. Ben's emotions could be felt in the excitement on the court and the fear of his father. Ben's internal conflict is accurately depicted in the manner in which he deals with his father's death.
Conroy is able to write this story so well because it is based on a part of his life. He actually moved to Beaufort (Ravenel), South Carolina during his junior year of high school. He was very upset at having to move one more time. His mother, whom he loved dearly, told him, "Go out and make this town your town." Conroy has lived and traveled all over the world, but he still calls Beaufort home.
Conroy was the star basketball player for his high school and attended The Citadel on a basketball scholarship. His father would never let him take a typing class because he thought that typing classes were only for girls. Conroy says that this has proven to be the most expensive thing his father has ever done to him. To this day he still cannot type. He writes his manuscripts in longhand and must pay to have them typed.
Rating: 
Summary: "Santini" not great, but certainly good enough.
Review: Though this is Pat Conroy's first novel, he certainly has promise as an author. His descriptions of locations and appearances are vivid and engaging. Unfortunately, one cannot say the same for his characters.
Ben Meecham, a high-school senior, is coping with the physical and mental abuse of his Marine pilot father, Bull. His mother, a Southern Belle named Lilian, is sweet and kind, but not without faults of her own. The daughter, Mary Anne, only one year younger than Ben, is ugly and quite cynical. Yet they live together, in an uncertain harmony, with younger children Matt and Karen. The problem with these characters is not Mr. Conroy's ability to create them as living, breathing beings. It is, rather, the lack of depth he has given them. After reading the novel, one does not really care about what happens to the central characters, and that is a definate problem. Likewise, the events that surround them seem to be self-serving and only present to cause the desired outcome. Being in a military family, the Meechams are used to moving throughout the South at a moment's notice, leaving friends and family behind. Mr. Conroy introduces a rape, without ever resolving the cause or effect on the community, purely with the purpose of creating an ironic twist in the plot: Ben's best friend leaves him instead of the other way around. Bull Meecham's eventual death, likewise, seems to serve no purpose but to justify Ben's ascent to manhood. The effect on the rest of the family is rattled off with a mere few pages, most of which describe funeral arrangements. Nonetheless, Mr. Conroy's ability to create a living, breathing world that certainly engages the reader is more than enough to warrant reading this novel. Despite its obvious faults, it is quite enjoyable.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Probably one of the most enjoyed books I have ever read. Conroy is truly the master storyteller. The book is destined to be a classic
Rating:
Summary: Bad Dad Disease
Review: Summer 2004 Reading List - Mini Review
The Great Santini is a pretty good coming of age story. It is not bad as an embracing-your-southern-heritage story. But it shines when it humanizes a monster of a Dad and shows how families of dysfunction operate and compensate. Conroy blends humor and morbidity in this somewhat autobiographical look at growing up as a marine kid in the South. I prefer Ordinary People when it comes to dysfunction, and A Walk To Remember when it comes to southern coming of age but this is still a good and thought provoking read.
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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.
Rating:
Summary: A look at America's past
Review: Years ago I read PRINCE OF TIDES and have always rated it as one of my favorite books. But I never got around to reading another Pat Conroy work until my son, who is in the Marines, gave me a copy of THE GREAT SANTINI.
Written in 1976 but set in the American South on the early 1960's it describes a hard drinking brutal side of the Marine Corp air division, that is hopefully a thing of the past. With current pilots limited on their consumption of alcohol prior to flying and an entirely different attitude about drinking in the contemporary world, the descriptios of the binge drinking by Bull Meechum and his pilots was alarming and often disgusting. The brutality among the Marines and the crude insults and language among them were not comical to me, but I'm judging them from a 21st century female perspective.
The descriptions of the spousal and child abuse by Bull were hopefully a thing of the past, along with the horrible racial sterotypes and racial abuse. We can only hope and pray that that generation of Americans no longer exist.
If Ben Meechum were a real person, he would be in his early 60's as would his sister Mary Ann. Did Ben go in to the Marine Corp? One wonders what happened to Lillian Meechum after Bull's death and Karen and Matt. Was Lillian ever able to regain her own self respect and identity. Throughout the book I wondered how she ever stayed with this abusive and crude man who abused her and her children, but considered in the context of the time, maybe she did not have a choice.
The Meechums were a totally disfunctional family. One would like to speculate on how this effected the Meechum children and their children.
It's a good read, but hopefully a part of America that no longer exist.
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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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