Book Review of Pat Conroy's South of Broad

Charleston Takes Center Stage in Conroy's Latest Novel

Oct 4, 2009

South of Broad is Pat Conroy's first novel since the exceptional Beach Music fourteen years ago and centers around a group of friends coming of age in Charleston.

The setting is Charleston, South Carolina and the city becomes just as much a character as anyone else in the Conroy's South of Broad. Conroy’s descriptions of Charlotte paint an indelible picture, “I grow calm when I see the ranks of palmetto trees pulling guard duty on the banks of Colonial Lake or hear the bells of St. Michael’s calling cadence in the cicada-filled trees along Meeting Street.”

High School Friends

South of Broad begins in the late ‘60s with Leopold Bloom King trying to adjust to life after his brother commits suicide. Born into a devout Catholic family, Leopold is haunted by the loss brother and spends much of his childhood in mental institutions. He calls himself, “[A] boy stopped in time, in a city of amber-colored life that possessed the glamour forbidden to a lesser angel.” During his senior year of high school, he meets five friends who bring him back to life change it forever: two Appalachian orphans, the son of the high school’s black football coach, and beautiful twin sister and brother, Sheba and Trevor Poe, who are on the run from a psychotic father.

South of Broad Tackles Difficult Questions

The novel alternates between Leopold’s senior year of high school and the year 1989 where Sheba Poe is a movie star. She heads back to Charlotte to round up everyone to help her find her lost brother, dying of AIDS in San Francisco. The group’s lives, reminiscent of the Big Chill, are intertwined with each other through marriage and career. They are seemingly able to leave on a whim and spend weeks in San Francisco searching for Trevor and dealing with their issues—and there is a handbag full of them. In typical Conroy fashion, this group is dealing with everything from mental illness, racial prejudice, sexual abuse, and adultery. The second part of the novel almost turns into a mystery as the reader is left wondering what happened to the Poe twins’ father and where he will turn up next. The ultimate answer to that question is very unsettling.

Conroy's Prose

Conroy’s prose is florid and lush and, at times, absolutely beautiful. He is an immensely gifted stylist and is absolutely lyrical when describing a beach or sunset. He tackles drama and heavy issues in typical Conroy fashion that can leave the reader exhausted towards the end. The novel is compulsively readable and his characters and their dysfunctions grow on you towards the end. The group is a set of extreme personalities, constantly bickering and dealing with life’s tragedies. But ultimately, the characters, and Conroy, rise to the challenge and face their demons as Hurricane Hugo blows into town. And what we are left with is hope and redemption as told by one of America’s greatest southern authors.

The copyright of the article Book Review of Pat Conroy's South of Broad in Modern American Fiction is owned by Kristi Gray. Permission to republish Book Review of Pat Conroy's South of Broad in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.