Rating: 
Summary: Still many unanswered questions
Review: I want to like this book, I really do. I want to understand what Conroy is telling us about his life, because it is not an ordinary life in any respect. The book can be a frustrating read from this perspective - a lot of attention given to the play by plays and not enough attention to issues that come up during the book. For instance, Conroy asserts several times during the book that military colleges don't support athletics and that the athletes are actually much disliked by the military establishment. But why? He never explains that, yet it's central to some of the issues in the book. He talks a lot about how the players loved their coach, yet during the season they act like they hate the guy's guts, so how did he arrive at the conclusion that they loved him? There is nothing in his narrative that would lead me to this conclusion. I've read Conroy's fiction and I'm not that crazy about it - too florid for me. This book, however, shows Conroy at his best. I just wish there was a little less [rear end] slapping and more attention to the big questions.
Rating: 
Summary: MY LOSING SEASON HAS WINNING READINGS
Review: Both Jay O. Sanders and Chuck Montgomery render thoroughly enjoyable readings of Conroy's love affair with basketball. A stand-up comedian and TV performer (The Sopranos, Law & Order), Montgomery brings nuanced richness to his performance on the Unabridged version. The acclaimed author of "Beach Music" and "The Prince of Tides," Conroy was a military child whose constant was change, from town to town and house to house. He discovered basketball at the age of nine and hung on for dear life. While enduring a less than perfect childhood, Conroy has said that basketball "provided a legitimate physical outlet for all the violence and rage and sadness I later brought to the writing table.......It was also the main language that allowed father and son to talk to each other. If not for sports, I do not think my father would have ever talked to me." Thus, "My Losing Season" is not just about a sport, but about a life. It is a memorable coming of age tale. Conroy played for the Citadel Bulldogs during their 1966-67 season. The team coach, Mel Thompson, was a harsh disciplinarian who was known for his 3 ½ hour Christmas Day practices. Rather than encouragement he doled out abuse. In retrospect Conroy looks at that season as a benchmark experience in his life. Although his teammates may very well wish they had been victorious, Conroy writes, "I consider it one of the great years of my life. If I could change history, if I could change everything that happened that year, if I could bring us a national championship I would not do it...It was the year I learned to accept loss as part of natural law. My team taught me there could be courage and dignity and humanity in loss...." Listen to this remarkable true story - listen and learn. - Gail Cooke
Rating:
Summary: the prince of ambivalence
Review: Pat Conroy is a pretty decent basketball player - but unless you read very closely, you won't come away with that impression. According to him, his main strengths are persistence and perhaps a bit of blind loyalty to a coach who even the most non-judgmental reader will realize is a walking personality disorder. Perhaps Conroy's strength as a player in college is the same as his strength as a writer - i.e. a willingness to show up, take notes, invest much time doing so, and finally, bear witness for his team and school. Those who have read Conroy's "The Lords of Discipline" will have a sense of deja vu in many places, and it may be fascinating to see how Conroy first shaped his time at the Citadel into fiction. You get to meet the real people whom the characters in "Lords" were based on, and also get a good sense of why Conroy kept his protagonist's father deceased.
He, himself, may disagree with this, but I believe that the early abuse Conroy received at the hands of his military father, may have kept him from seeing his college coach as the monster he was. The book is well-written but charts a lot more humiliation than triumph, and the reader may become unsure as to whether Conroy is exaggerating or under-stating. One page, X is a monster, the next, he is singing X's praises. So the read as a whole, keeps your interest, but in many places can be somewhat grueling to get through. As a writer, he is both acutely self-aware and maddingly blind to other people's character. Towards the end, Conroy states that his father eventually changed, and became closer to the idealized father his "The Great Santini" book/movie. Yet he leaves out the details of this transformation. That was a disappointment. But maybe that's the subject of a future book.
Rating:
Summary: Well Worth The Long Wait
Review: What a great writer. There's always a certain sense of loss I feel after reading Conroy novels, after being immersed in his world for several hundred pages and knowing that the journey has reached its end. The sights, sounds, scents and impressions stay with you in many ways, for long periods of time. I remember perusing a mystery novel by an author I've long forgotten immediately after savoring every last word of "Beach Music." There was nothing wrong with the mystery novel, but I couldn't remember anything more than the name of the main character several days later. Yet I could recite paragraphs, describe the plot and quote dialogue from "Beach Music" years later. And "My Losing Season," although non-fiction, makes the same remarkable impression. This is Conroy's description of his senior season on The Citadel's basketball team, which took place in fall 1966 and spring 1967. Because it's heavy on basketball content, there are some Conroy fans who might not sink their teeth into "My Losing Season" quite as deeply as they did his previous books. But Conroy has again dazzled this reader with his prose, not to mention bringing me to tears on more than one occasion as he describes his tortured youth at the hands of his child-beating Marine father. So, too, did his marvelous descriptions of the competitiveness and personalities involved in The Citadel locker room absolutely captivate me. You can almost hear the cadets roaring at the games, and you can almost smell the sweaty socks. Conroy was inspired to write this book after a chance meeting with a former teammate at an Ohio store signing during the "Beach Music" tour. In case you haven't read any of his previous novels, the non-fiction account of his plebe year is as harrowing as any of the best-sellers on his resume. But the bulk of this instant classic is about his senior year, where a good collection of players were unable to jell under the iron-fisted Mel Thompson. This coach sounded like Bobby Knight at his worst, but without the coaching genius, and it's no wonder that many of the players from that team still carry emotional scars a generation later. Perhaps the most admirable part of the book is near the end, when Conroy describes his recent meetings with each player (as well as Coach Thompson, who still sounds too self-consumed to have inspired his dog back then, let alone a group of young athletes). Teammate Al Korboth, a Vietnam vet and Purple Heart winner, was finally convinced to tell his devastating prisoner of war story, and Conroy admits his own shame and guilt in discussing his actions about the war a generation ago. It's also interesting to hear him reflect on the Shannon Faulkner saga of several years ago, as well as The Citadel's ultimate lifting of their ban against him. In my estimation, it takes a great deal of courage to write so brutally honestly about one's own pain and suffering, and to do it so beautifully is even more stunning of an accomplishment. It is comforting to know that based on the last chapters, Conroy seems to have found some peace in recent years, and a large part of that, I'm sure, has to do with mending his relationship with his father during the last years of his life. If there's another book left in this great writer, I look forward to it. If not, "My Losing Season" will serve as a fantastic coda to a remarkable literary career. The man is truly a giant.
Rating:
Summary: Pat Conroy Comes Clean About Basketball And About Life
Review: I am a big fan of Pat Conroy, and it is very good to see him finally come clean with the truth behind so much of his work. His idea with My Losing Season is that you learn much more from defeat than from victory, and to this end he uses the real stories of his family and childhood to relate to the reader the true story of his senior year at The Citadel in Charleston, and of his final basketball season there as a player. I am not a big basketball fan, but I had a very hard time putting the book down. It was very interesting to compare these actual stories with the ones in his marvelous fiction, seeing what it takes to build great writing and a great writer. I was particularly interested in how Mr. Conroy tracks down and interviews members from his old team, and how he discovers that many of them still carry the same unspoken pain from that year that he does. The self-awareness and closure the book provides is truly uplifting and inspiring. I learned a lot reading this book, both about basketball and about life. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Abuse and Losing Forges a Winner
Review: Writer Pat Conroy uses the 1966/67 basketball season at The Citadel where he was a senior point guard as the engine from which his views on life are produced. He played for a despotic coach, was raised by a tyrannical, abusive father, and grew up struggling to be the best he could despite being told he was worthless. The basic theme in this personal look at the best sports has to offer, is that life-long lessons can be learned when you lose, especially if you take the time to reflect upon the experience. MY LOSING SEASON is a story of the human spirit; how a young man was able to survive and prosper despite being told repeatedly of his short-comings. When he was honored for success, those who had the greatest influence, his father and his coach, denigrated him. Nevertheless, Pat Conroy prevailed. I haven't read any of his other books but have seen the movies developed from them. Each has abuse in its many destructive forms as its unifying principle. MY LOSING SEASON also uses abuse as the behavior to examine and to interest its readers. It is refreshing to see that despite the pain and unfairness, victims of abuse are able to succeed. Abuse seems to forge the human spirit into a durable, determined empathic person. MY LOSING SEASON describes that process beautifully.
Rating:
Summary: An Enlightening Memoir
Review: I have read all of Pat Conroy's books. The Prince of Tides has been on the absolute top of my favorites list since it first came out. Over the years, and through his novels, it has always been in my mind that he must have had a very troubled life indeed. Aside from his obvious talent with words, writing has also been his therapy. Now, since the death of his parents, we get a view of just where he came from, and it's really not such a surprise. One suffers for the young man in his losing season, and one suffers for the middle-age man who wrote about it. It's gratifying to know that his father could reform (a bit) after reading the Great Santini. Conroy's insight into that particular basketball season, and what seeds were sown within him, shows once again his keen abilities in the art of retrospection. My only complaint, and it's a small one, is the sometimes needless play-by-play of each game of that season. It shouldn't put anyone off reading My Losing Season though, and it won't change my annual habit of reading at least one of his previous novels.
Rating: 
Summary: My Losing Season
Review: Pat Conroy is arguably the best writer of our times. His character development, attention to detail, and turns-of-the-phrase are to be praised and esteemed. I am also arguably the most devoted Conroy fan, having read, loved, and memorized every one of his novels. However, this book was an extreme disappointment.
First, there is the structure. For the most part, Conroy describes every single game the Citadel Bulldogs played his senior year on the basketball team. Additionally, at the beginning and the end of the novel--fittingly as this is in flash-back form--Conroy talks about the current status of his old team-mates and coach. Yet, there are parts of the book that do not seem to fit.
Conroy spends a good many pages describing his elementary, middle and high school basketball careers; while this would be fitting if the book were an autobiography or even if it were solely about Conroy's love of basketball, it seems pointless as the novel claims to center around a single season. He also talks about his multiple marriages, frequent mental breakdowns, previous novels (at one point even talking to characters from his novels) and other aspects of his life that, while interesting, again break away from the main idea of the single season. Also, like in all Conroy books, there are the "I hate my father and the military" statements, which--I hate to say--grow a bit old after a while (though, admittedly, he says he later grew to love his father and reconciled with his alma mater).
Second, there is the language of the text. While Conroy is known for his mastery of the English language, it seemed that he was "trying too hard" in this book; the sentences were longer and more dramatic than they had to be, and at some points I was laughing at Conroy's word selections.
I suppose my main problem with this novel was that I didn't understand his purpose in writing it until the last ten pages. He wrote the novel to show that everyone has "losing seasons" and to show that while winning is great, it is our mistakes that teach us our greatest lessons. While this is certainly an admirable, and sound argument, it was not apparent until the last ten pages, forcing one to wonder many times "What's the point?!"
In conclusion, this was an "OK" read. If you are a true Conroy fan, I don't even know why you're skimming these reviews, because you know you're going to read the book anyway. If you are merely interested in reading Pat Conroy's work, that's wonderful, but don't let this mediocre novel be your first exposure to a truly exceptional author who can and has written better (read Beach Music or The Prince of Tides instead).
Rating:
Summary: A Slam Dunk!
Review: When I began reading "My Losing Season", I glanced at the endpaper photograph. Reprinted from the '1967 Sphinx', the class yearbook of The Citadel, it depicts twelve young basketball players posing for their official team photograph. Author Pat Conroy is the small guy at the front and center of the old black and white photo, kneeling alongside the basketball, a spot typically reserved for the team captain. But we can't be sure he is the team captain, or for that matter, we can't be sure anyone is the captain. No one actually holds the ball. Over the course of 400 pages, I found myself looking back to this photo repeatedly, as Conroy adds deep dimension into each player's background and character. Conroy unveils the story behind his team, the 1966-67 Citadel Bulldogs who lost more games than they won, but as he brings forth, learned enough for a lifetime. "My Losing Season" tells the story of a young man's journey through a very difficult boyhood, his escape into sport, his endurance at a southern military school, his central participation on a team of moderately talented basketball players, and his discovery of language and writing through wonderful professors at the Citadel. Conroy's greatest strength, his strong and unabashed character portrayals, resonates through this book. Readers of The Great Santini (or viewers of the Robert Duvall movie) will become reacquainted in great detail with the real-life Santini, Conroy's abusive father. "In My Losing Season", we also meet basketball coach Mel Thompson, who inflicts psychological terror on his charges, constantly tearing apart his young players and destroying any chance at winning this team might ever have had. Conroy adorns his professors and deans at the Citadel with laurels for giving him the keys to his future as a writer. But Conroy shines the light most brilliantly on his teammates. He effuses his fellow cadets with the color that is missing from the front photograph, intimately introducing the reader to his court colleagues. We learn about strengths, weaknesses, skills, fears, and limitations of each of the twelve. Four years of coach Mel Thompson, cadet hazings, severely repressed social lives and a total absence of support make for an over-extended "Survivor" episode. Conroy saves the best for last: a reunion tour in which he reconnects with each of the individuals on the team and their families independently, thirty years after hanging up his Converse high-tops. Emotions spill over. Nearly a dozen basketball games are described, in a kind of sepia-toned movie reel, as Conroy relives the play-by-play from his vantage at point guard. He overuses the flowery adjectives at times ("the beautiful boy" and such) but balances it with good locker room banter and the practical jokes of young men. The games themselves come alive again, and I found myself rooting for second half comebacks and last second heroics. You can feel the ball coming up the court, and like his teammates, you wonder where the pumpkin's going to go. Conroy emotes a strong love for his game, and basketball fans will appreciate the occasional name-dropping of great players and coaches he once bumped into. If you don't have courtside seats to this year's ACC or SEC tournament finals, this book will be a suitable replacement. Nothin' but net, baby!
Rating: 
Summary: MY CAPS LOCKS BUTTON ISN'T WORKING...
Review: WE SHOULD ALL HAVE A LOSING SEASON LIKE PAT CONROY. HE WON THE SPORTSMANSHIP TROPHY AND MVP TROPHY FOR HIS BASKETBALL SEASON. HE WON A SCHOLARSHIP TO GRADUATE SCHOOL AND SEVERAL OTHER AWARDS. HE'S HAD BOOKS MADE INTO MOVIES. WHY IS HE WHINING? HE HAD A TOUGH CHILDHOOD. TIME TO MOVE ON, PAT. YOUR BOOKS ARE FUN TO READ BUT WE GET THE THEME ALREADY! MAYBE YOUR DAD WANTED YOU TO FIGHT HIM BACK. MAYBE COACH THOMPSON WANTED YOUR TEAMMATES TO FIGHT HIM BACK. WHO KNOWS? WHO CARES? LET'S GO PLAY H-0-R-S-E...
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