South of Broad by Pat Conroy

I’ve got one word for Pat Conroy’s latest novel, South of Broad — overwrought.

After waiting 14 years for another book by one of my favorite authors and hearing nothing but good things about it, I’m having trouble making sense out of the breathless reviews.

This book is maudlin and bloated and completely unbelievable. So unbelievable, in fact, I’m tempted to put it in the fantasy category. That whole suspension-of-disbelief thing we’re supposed to give writers when reading science fiction or fantasy? I felt it was required here, too.

If you’re going to move your readers, Mr. Conroy, make your characters believable. Okay, maybe you do know someone who’s so inanely self-important and pedantic they’d demand an entire town recognize a once-a-year celebration based on a character from a book no one will admit they haven’t read (and most haven’t). And maybe you know a town so sycophantic it would entertain the whim of one narcissistic female. Maybe you do know heterosexual teenaged boys who sew dresses for their mothers because their mothers raised them to be feminists. I don’t.

And if you’re going to set a story in the 1960s – a time of rebellion and free love and all the rest – then you simply CANNOT expect teenagers to go to integrated parties saying things like, “We were raised with great privilege, but also with great expectations. Family is everything, the one holy word. The glue that holds our whole society together,” without the rest of the party laughing them right out of the room. In 1969, any teenager worth their salt would be thrilled to be thumbing their nose at the establishment by inviting – shudder – Negroes to a party.

These aren’t characters; they’re caricatures. The main character, Leo Bloom, is such a goody two-shoes, he's downright annoying. He is mature far beyond his years, so far it seems, that he's able to fend off a race riot, singlehandedly, on the first day of school and end the day by dictating to the adults how the participants should be punished and how the school should handle such events in the future. The day a school principal allows a child to tell her how to run the school… Well, I’m just saying.

Leo: “…I didn’t fail. I succeeded. It was you and the teaching staff who failed. None of you were there to help defuse an explosive situation.”

The prinicipal (aka Leo’s mother): “I had called a meeting to discuss the school year.”

Leo: “We needed a large presence of teachers.”

Coach Jefferson: “I’ll be out there tomorrow morning.”

Thank goodness Leo can tell the adults how to run the school.

The characters did so much crying and sobbing and gnashing of teeth that I didn’t feel the least bit moved anywhere in the book – it was emotional overload. This book left me so devoid of emotion that I have to wonder – is it Conroy’s writing that’s changed or is it I who’ve changed? And to be perfectly fair, I think maybe it’s me.

I’ll never forget sitting in bed for an entire weekend reading The Prince of Tides with a box of tissues on one side and a batch of mimosas on the other. I cried so hard I gave myself hiccups. He had me hooked from the first words. “Geography is my wound.”

I was desperately disappointed in Barbara Streisand’s butchery of the book on screen, certain that she’d missed the entire point. It wasn’t about the sex between the shrink and the main character, Babs, regardless how manicured your nails were or how many times you crossed your shapely legs.

It was about place. And how we are who we are because of place. And when place is destroyed, sometimes so are we. But, hey. Maybe I get it because I’m from Natchez, Mississippi, and not Malibu, California. Okay, I’m getting off the subject, I know.

I do remember thinking Conroy had gone a little overboard with the pathos a few times in The Prince of Tides, but it was so much fun I didn’t care and devoured the story like a fine meal. And I missed it after it was done.

I was disappointed in Beach Music, thinking there was much meaty history hinted at, but never delivered on. I didn’t buy My Losing Season.

Maybe it’s just that I’m 52 instead of 28 now. Maybe I’m cynical in my old age. Conroy does do good prose – elegant writing and beautiful descriptions. Perhaps this latest book was just as good as The Prince of Tides, The Lords of Discipline and The Great Santini, but I’m jaded. I think perhaps I’ve bought my last Pat Conroy novel. And that does make me sad.