As you know, Pat Conroy is one of my favorite "newly-discovered" authors. My only disappointment with this novel was that it shared so many similarities with the last one. It reminded me of The Prince of Tides in that:
- it was written from the perspective of an adult son who has a complicated relationship with his family members
- the narrator and his brothers all have the same personality/sense of humor as the narrator in The Prince of Tides
- we are made to both resent and feel sympathetic toward the narrator's parents
- the bulk of the plot takes place in the South
- depression and suicide leave indelible marks on the main characters
And while maybe this list of similarities seems insignificant enough in an 800 page book, I often did feel like I was reading something I had already read. Still, I was engaged enough in the plot to read the entire novel and really enjoy it. I love finding an author that writes well consistently, and I would still include Conroy in this category.
Beach Music (published by Bantam Books in 1995) begins in Rome, where the narrator (Jack) and his young daughter, Leah, now live. The girl's mother, Shyla, committed suicide after a lonely and tormented life, and throughout the novel we are introduced to the reasons behind her torment, namely the stories of her parents' experiences during the Holocaust that endlessly haunted her in dreams and hallucinations. When Jack hears that his mother is dying back home in the South, he and Leah make the journey home for the first time since Shyla's death. It is here that Leah is introduced to a culture she is completely unfamiliar with, while Jack begins the long process of reconciliation with a family and group of friends that had been torn apart years before.
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