Beach Music

by Pat Conroy

An American expatriate in Rome unearths his family legacy in this sweeping novel by the acclaimed author of The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini

A Southerner living abroad, Jack McCall is scarred by tragedy and betrayal. His desperate desire to find peace after his wife’s suicide draws him into a painful, intimate search for the one haunting secret in his family’s past that can heal his anguished heart. Spanning three generations and two continents, from the contemporary ruins of the American South to the ancient ruins of Rome, from the unutterable horrors of the Holocaust to the lingering trauma of Vietnam, Beach Music sings with life’s pain and glory. It is a novel of lyric intensity and searing truth, another masterpiece among Pat Conroy’s legendary and beloved novels.

Genres: Fiction, Book Club, Southern, Historical Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Audiobook

800 pages, Paperback

First published July 2, 1995

About the author

Pat Conroy (1945 - 2016) was the New York Times bestselling author of two memoirs and seven novels, including The Prince of Tides, The Great Santini, and The Lords of Discipline. He is recognized as a leading figure of late-20th century Southern literature.

Born the eldest of seven children in a rigidly disciplined military household, he attended the Citadel, the military college of South Carolina. He briefly became a schoolteacher (which he chronicled in his memoir The Water Is Wide) before publishing his first novel, The Boo. Conroy lived on Fripp Island, South Carolina until his death in 2016.

Conroy passed away on March 4, 2016 at his home from Pancreatic Cancer. He was 70 years old at the time of his death.

Reviews

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

I met Pat Conroy at a book signing event in Atlanta when this book was released. There just so happened to be another Furman Alumni in line ahead of us and I heard Conroy say something about Furman. I spoke up making sure he knew I was there. His response was something like "You Furman people are like Lynx, you're everywhere!" So, thinking I understood that his spat with The Citadel had turned him sour against the school I made some smartass, derogatory comment about The Citadel. He signed my book "Citadel Forever, Pat Conroy." I'm such a jackass.

I've read this book at least 3 times and I've cried at the ending all three times. The first time I was in a room full of prospective jurors waiting to be called for duty in Marietta, GA. I had to go to the restroom to finish the last page or two and collect myself before going back out into that room of 200 strangers. Beautiful, beautiful book.

[Sara · Rating 1 out of 5]

The back cover of this book doesn't give a very good description of what the plot is about. And why would it (how could it?), when the plot is this much of a mess? In short: Jack McCall is an American who moves to Rome with his young daughter after his wife commits suicide, intending to never see anyone from his past again (including his own family), but he eventually comes home and starts dealing with the past.

The long version of the plot is... I don't even know where to begin, the book is such a mess. In the preface alone, all this happens: Shyla (Jack's wife) kills herself before their daughter is two years old; Shyla's parents sue Jack for custody of his daughter, claiming he's an unfit father and even lying in court that he beats his daughter; everyone believes that if Jack had only been a good husband and a good father, his wife would not have killed herself; Jack retains custody of his daughter not because he's actually a good father but because of a letter his wife wrote before she died; and Jack moves to Rome to be a travel writer there and escape his past. I feel exhausted just recapping that - and it was only the preface. Good grief. What more could happen in the next nearly-800 pages? Jack is conveniently everyone's confidant, he's at important places when big events happen, and he's pivotal to everyone. Let me give a rundown of the book's topics:

-Family secrets. Shyla's sister-in-law tracks down Jack with a private investigator and says her family wants to make up with him and they realize he didn't kill Shyla, it was her mom who'd driven her to suicide! And if Jack would only let her explain, he'd understand. Also, they want to know his daughter and they have family secrets to share with him.

-Suicide. Shyla's death is a huge factor in the book. Everyone seems to have the idea that Jack wasn't a good husband because of it. Jack even says that one of his high school friends would have put him on her list of available guys but since his wife killed herself, he's clearly not good husband material. Huh?

-Hollywood! One of Jack's high school friends gets in touch with Jack; he's a big Hollywood producer now and wants Jack to write a miniseries about their childhoods. I understand that everyone thinks they have a story in them, and lots of people think the story of their lives would be a great movie, but dang. Really? This producer is convinced he needs Jack on board or it won't be a huge hit.

-Abuse. There are abusive fathers and abusive pastors. There was also an incident in which Jack stopped a man from hitting a woman (everyone was in disbelief that Jack stood up to this beast!) and then ended up in jail for the night with his daughter by his side. Yeah.

-Religion. Jack is Catholic and Shyla was Jewish. And yet they made it work! Everyone is shocked by the fact they worked so well together with this religious difference.

-A faked death/disappearing act. One of their high school friends had supposedly died and everyone went to his memorial service, but the Hollywood producer claims the man is alive... and Jack knows where he is! This is actually true; the guy had faked his own death to get away from his abusive father and reinvented himself as a priest in Rome. Jack is the only friend who knows he's still alive. But how did everyone else hear the rumor that this guy had faked his own death? Simple: one of their old teachers, on vacation in Italy, went to confession and heard his voice as her confessor! Since she never forgets a voice, she immediately recognized who it was by voice alone and spread the word back home!

-The Nazis.

-Orphans.

-The Vietnam War - Jack and his friends protest during this, all of which is shown in flashbacks.

-Leukemia. Jack's mom is dying of cancer, which brings him back to the US. He's initially skeptical, because she'd faked cancer before for attention.

-Schizophrenia.

-Alcoholism.

-Loggerhead turtles and their eggs.

I could go on, but I won't. This book was so melodramatic, so sappy, that I felt as if I were reading a Lifetime Original Movie, only for men. And covering so many topics that it wasn't even movie-length. It was more like a seasons-long series that I'd never, ever want to actually watch.

Jack's daughter, who plays a bigger role early on in the book but then gets sort of lost in the rest of the madness, is precocious and completely unbelievable. The dialogue between her and Jack is particularly awkward in a book filled with tedious conversations. She never acted her age, and the author wrote Jack in a way that tried to make him seem like the perfect, absolute perfect father doting on his perfect, absolutely perfect daughter, but it was done in such a sappy manner that they never actually felt real.

The writing was also poor. It wasn't completely awful - it was readable - but it certainly wasn't stellar. The book did not need to be so long; the book sorely needed to be edited. An example of the purple prose:

After we finished the pasta, I assembled a large army of greens and arranged them deftly until they took on a disheveled order. The olive oil was extra-virgin and recently pressed in Lucca and the vinegar was balsamic, black from its careful aging in rimmed barrels, and soon the smells of the kitchen coalesced to make me dizzy as I kissed the two women in my life and poured the wine to toast the health of the three of us.

This is why the book ended up at nearly 800 pages.

Jack has four brothers, three of whom blended together to the point that I couldn't distinguish between them; the fourth only stood out because he suffered from schizophrenia and would rant obnoxiously. It wasn't funny, it wasn't clever, and it didn't make for good filler material - especially since so much else was contained in this book!

There was a random flashback when Jack visits Venice and he recalls another time when he'd visited Venice and a masked woman led him to her house, where she proceeds to have sex with him (in pretty explicit detail) and he realizes that she would never reveal her identity to him. It was rather odd, since it affected the plot in absolutely no way.

Also: there was a Jewish man who'd moved to this town way back in the day, befriending Jack's grandparents, and everyone loved him. Everyone refers to him (to his face, behind his back) as The Great Jew. I am not joking. The Great Jew.

I did like one short part of the book, a flashback in which Jack and some of his high school friends go fishing on the water and end up stranded for days, having to rely on the survival skills of one of them in order to live. This part was actually interesting. But that was it. And it wasn't worth the 500+ pages it took to get there. It also had no effect on the rest of the book. But then again, so much of the book had no effect on the rest of the book.

Just when the book finally, FINALLY ends... there's more disappointment! There's an epilogue! As if more needed to be said about anything. But it was a way to jump forward in the future and show how perfect life had turned out for Jack. This was all done in a super sappy, melodramatic manner that seemed more fit for a made-for-TV movie-of-the-week than a supposedly big saga about family and whatever else.

This book was awful and way too long; I skimmed most of it because it definitely was not worth the time to actually read. I would have stopped on page 2 if this hadn't been this month's book club pick. I can't believe this book has ANY good reviews, let alone the fact that the author is a bestseller!

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

“A story gives only pleasure. A lie gives mostly pain.” (3.5 stars)

BEACH MUSIC is a novel that requires you to suspend your disbelief, then suspend it some more, then stomp on it, kick it in the mouth, and then suspend it again. I was all over the place with this book! At times it is so melodramatic, it borders on being a soap opera. And yet you keep reading because you recognize Pat Conroy’s talent, and you trust him to snap out of it (he does for brief interludes) and because you don’t want to miss when he does have stunning moments. And he does have them!
The text careens from one ridiculous plot device to another. The protagonist in some form or other deals with the Holocaust, suicide, cancer, a terrorist attack, being marooned at sea, Vietnam, a trial, schizophrenia, manslaughter, the Holocaust…again…among others. Literally, there are plot elements for a dozen books in here. It is like every idea Conroy ever had he crushed into one story. An editor was needed for this text. A good one would have made this an excellent novel.
I can deal with rolling my eyes from time to time, so really there were only two things that made me hateful about this book. First was the protagonist’s 8-year-old daughter, Leah. She is written as a simpering, cloying waif much smarter than her years, and it set my teeth on edge. It is a terrible characterization, and there are moments where she was so unrealistically rendered that it was borderline criminal. The second issue was Part VI of the novel which was such schlock that I would have thrown the book across the room and never picked it up again if it were not 40 pages from the end.
Among the highlights for me was the protagonist’s mother, Lucy McCall, and her storyline. Most of the book’s most touching and truthful moments concern her. Another great strength is Conroy’s writing. Despite the ridiculousness of the plot, Conroy is such a talented wordsmith that at times I found myself emotionally invested. He also vividly creates the atmosphere of the low country of South Carolina, an area that I love!
Some moments that I found well done and/or truthful to our humanity:
• “…telling jokes and stories that are both the source of intimacy and evasion among teenage boys.”
• “Literature was where the world made sense for me.”
• “Drifting through books, I found the pleasures of discovery to be an almost daily occurrence.”
• “Holocaust. One English word should not be required to carry so many human hearts.”
• “For without music, life is a journey through a desert that has not ever heard the rumor of God. In music’s sweet harmony, I had all the proof I needed of a God who held the earth together between the staffs, where the heavens lay.”
• “I want to make someone happy…I might even have a gift for it.”
• “But I had lived a long time knowing of the hardships and perils that eat around the edges of even the strongest loves.”
• A survivor who says of the Holocaust, “Well, you can imagine what it is like. Except you cannot.”
• “…that beautiful music was a place a suffering man could hide.”
• “I had recently become acutely aware that mistranslation, mistakes of emphasis, and the inevitability of a flawed interpretation of an experience could lead to an imperfect view of things.”
Despite the sheer amount of ridiculous stuff that BEACH MUSIC contains, I kept reading. Why? Because it is a good story. However, that is also this novel’s weakness. Because the sheer volume of events that swirl around the protagonist is unrealistic, you never forget that it’s just a story. It does not capture you consistently because you are always being drawn out of it.
Even though BEACH MUSIC is a soap opera, it is still soap opera written by a talented man (in serious need of an editor). You read Pat Conroy and you go “Oh my, so many words’…which at times evolves into, “Oh my, so many beautiful, perfect words.”

[W · Rating 3 out of 5]

When Pat Conroy initially wrote it,the draft was over 2,000 pages.He had already received an advance for a million dollars and had already spent it,without writing the book.His personal life was in turmoil at the time and he was having trouble with his then wife,whom he later accused of stealing millions of dollars from him.

The book was cut down from the original 2,000 pages.But even then,the sheer size of this book is daunting,over 600 pages,in my hardback edition.And it rambles,it feels fairly disjointed

Still,I was prepared to spend a good long while reading it,as I had enjoyed The Prince of Tides.Beach Music has a lot of characters and too many different stories.

Conroy takes too many detours. However,in their own right,these disparate stories remain interesting,though a shade disturbing.

As in The Prince of Tides,dysfunctional family life is at the centre of the book. There is a lot of doom and gloom,and as in his other books,Conroy seems to have drawn heavily from his own life.

Conroy lived in Rome for several years,a good part of the book is set in Rome.Conroy kept a journal and kept a record of daily events and conversations which he could use in his books.Here too,an actual terrorist attack at Rome airport becomes part of the story.

There is one character modeled on his brother,who took his own life. There are boyhood adventures,a military school (which he attended) and tales of holocaust survivors,among other things.That part is very violent.

It all begins in Italy,a single man raising his daughter,after his wife's suicide. But after a while,it's back to the American South,which he knows best.

The protagonist and his brothers keep vigil by the bedside of their dying mother,who herself is not a likeable character.Nor for that matter is their father.This time,however,he goes a bit easier on the father and the focus is more on the mother.

It is not really a cheerful book. It has pretty dark themes with some graphic violence. But at times it is very intense and has flashes of the Conroy humour.

I certainly wished,however,that it was a lot shorter. It took far too much time to read.Also makes me wonder how much more the original 2,000 page manuscript contained.

[Cathrine ☯️ · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 ⛵️⛵️⛵️⛵️⛵️

I’ve been in a bit of funk with books this year. Not sure it’s me or my choices.
Pat would probably say
But C, “you get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up.” — The Prince of Tides

I’ve been wishing for a novel to come along like a strong wind, catch my sails and take me out to sea. When this title won a group book of the month poll I thought Maybe? I’m such a fan and what better way to get out of a reading slump than an 800+ page novel you read and loved 30 years ago right?

Or maybe not?
Reportedly, Pat was suffering extra personal turmoil when he wrote it, so perhaps way more cathartic than his usual trademark revenge fiction. Optioned for a movie but never made it to the big screen as four of his other books did.
An overblown, chaotic, exaggerated mess said some fans (they aren’t necessarily wrong about that).
Let sleeping pages lie?

You take a risk rereading a beloved novel decades later—things change.
Aging has made me a harsher critic; harder to please.
I didn’t want to fall out of love with my five star memories.
I did have some issues this time around but he’s gone now and his death cheated me out of more stories. In the end there weren't enough of them.
I’m as in love with the prince of scribes and his beach music prose as ever, so yeah, all kinds of bias here.
Cue Sailing by Christopher Cross.
“All caught up in the reverie
Every word is a symphony”

Included in my copy was Pat’s letter to an editor about schools banning books.

https://patconroy.com/a-letter-to-the...

[Kate Dolack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pat Conroy is a magical writer, and his 'Beach Music,' is no exception. This is perhaps my favorite book of all time, though I do alternate with his other, 'The Prince of Tides,' so beware that I'm reviewing 'Beach Music' as a committed Conrophile, (if such a phrase could exist). Jack McCall is a sweeping character, and when the book opens, we find he and his daughter ensconced away in Rome after a family tragedy. What follows is a story that, in my opinion, weaves a brilliant quilt of familiarly eccentric characters through various periods of the twentieth century. Conroy is excellent at exposing family drama while psychologically diving deep below the surface, yet almost entirely colored by the perspective of his Jack McCall. Conroy, the son of a Marine Aviator, did not grow up exclusively in the Charleston low-country, though he has called Charleston his adopted home. Given Conroy's incredible descriptions of low-country, as well as Rome, a reader might surmise that Conroy isn't really writing about a fictional Jack McCall, but more various facets of his own life disguised. Perhaps this is why I love 'Beach Music,' and Pat Conroy so very much: one gets less of a sense that they are reading complete fiction, but rather peeking into the diary of a literary great.

[Sharon Metcalf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not so much a book as a life experience, Pat Conroy's Beach Music covers a heck of a lot of topics. Like his other titles this one has family and friendship are the forefront but the scope of this novel was vast covering alcoholism, suicide, schizophrenia, domestic violence, religion, the holocaust, the vietnam war, politics, trust, sickness, survival, and love in all shapes and sizes. He so thoroughly tackles each topic it sometimes felt like he'd written several books in one.

Primarily set in Waterford, South Carolina, Beach Music is a family saga of epic proportions. From the very first sentence of the Prologue we learnt Jacks' wife Shyla suicided leaving him to raise their 2 year old daughter Leah. Shyla leapt to her death and was swept away just as we readers were swept into the drama of this magnificent book. Beach Music was a tribute to Shyla, to Southern families of all shapes and sizes, to enduring friendships and to reconciliation. As Jack leads us through his personal history and those of extended family, of friends and their families, the stories creep into progressively more difficult territory. Recollections of domestic violence within his own home and that of his friend Jordan. From his mothers desperately difficult redneck start to life, he progressed to sharing his in-laws experiences as European Jews. With entire chapters dedicated to the atrocities and horrors of WWII this made for horrendous reading. Jack recalls his experiences of resisting the Vietnam war, highlighting the divisiveness caused within American society, amongst family and friends, the strength of opinion and lengths people went to express their beliefs. Of course these are just some of the bigger topics and not all were gloom and doom. There were stories of flourishing friendships showing how trust was built as big and small life experiences were shared. There were stories of brotherly love, albeit expressed with sarcasm, humour and gruffness. The way those same brothers learnt to express their love in both words and deeds for their dying mum. There was the passing of the baton from grandmother to granddaughter for the care and protection of the loggerhead turtles. There was the delightful relationship between Jack and daughter Leah, and the stories of the Great dog Chippie. There was an element of intrigue as we waited to find out what had caused an irreparable rift between previously firm friends, and so the list goes on. As I sit and try to catalogue the high's and lows the list is long. For me, the the icing on the cake was the way it caused tears of both sadness and joy, and the fact that I never once tired of this book of almost 800 pages.

As always Pat Conroy's writing was delicious, insightful and full of meaning. He's skilled at creating characters that step off the page, into your life and linger in your memory. But above all of this he is a master in the art of telling a story. I have a hunch these words (p249) attributed to Jack actually describe Pat Conroy himself. "We told stories to each other, and my brothers, like me, mark time by cherishing the details that stud the layers of each great story. They were Southern boys and they knew how to make a story sizzle when it hit the fat" . Thank you Pat Conroy, your story most definitely sizzled throughout and it made me cherish the details.

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm having a hard time kicking this review off, because there is just...so much.

I finished this novel last night and have started another, but my head is still full of this story.

When I was about 3/4 through the story, an image came to mind. You know when you place a drop of oil on a water surface and then that drop expands out? That's how this story structure seemed to evolve.

Beach Music starts off with the main character talking about his wife, who had jumped off a South Carolina bridge to her death. He has started a new life in Rome with his young daughter.
As Jack struggles to come to terms with his wife's suicide and recent developments in his life, the past is slowly revealed to us. His Southern past, and his friends and family's past. I thought Pat Conroy's story structure and even his pacing was brilliant.

I say "even his pacing" because some of the more negative reviews I've seen have called this novel bloated and tedious. And that can be a fair assessment depending on how you approach it.
I picked Beach Music off the to-read list after rejecting a good chunk of suspense novels that have started to dominate my list. At the time, the genre was becoming tiresome to me. The predictability of unreliable narrators, the obligatory twists, my eyes just glazed over them.
I was in the mood for just a novel. Just a story with family drama and characters I could care about.

I was tired of fast paced plotting. I was tired of racing through yet another hype of the month.
Pat Conroy's Prince of Tides was one of my favorite novels ever (Lords of Discipline, not so much), so it was time to give him another shot.
I was ready to settle back, and let a story unfold in my head.
This story: I felt like I lived it.

Pat Conroy was in no rush to tell this story. There are many paths taken and thoughts to consider, so the reader should not be in a rush to have the story (stories) told.
My head is full. So many parts to this story will continue to linger with me and in some ways it's a burden...I want to move on and enjoy my next read. But in other ways it's wonderful.
I must say that the only negative thing here was how I felt about the second-last chapter or so...the "gathering" was a bit of a reach for me. But this is a very small thing in the grand scheme, and easily forgettable (I had completed this review and forgot to mention it...until just now).

It's going to take a while to shake this novel off. Five stars for that. A brilliant read that I would recommend to anyone.

[Lp · Rating 1 out of 5]

Possibly one of the worst books I have ever had the misfortune to read. I bought it after hearing Nan Talese, Conroy's editor, talk about how it was put together. In retrospect, I should have realized that her telling of how Conroy was impaired by drink and depression during the writing of the book, and her active role in putting the book together meant it would be a crazy-quilt hodgepodge rambling Faulkner wannabe of a book. When the Nazis showed up, I though, Oh My God.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

While competently written and quite entertaining, Beach Music tries to be too many books in one. I didn't think the various aspects of the story resonated with each other enough to belong in the same book. I felt that Conroy could have written three tighter novels with the material he packed into this one loose one. For example, the long backstory about Lucy's childhood, while interesting, could have been shortened considerably or left to the imagination. It was enough to know she wasn't "of good breeding" and had gone to great lengths to compensate. The Great Jew's childhood story also seemed to belong in another book, as well. All these separate characters' stories gave the novel the feeling of a series of vignettes instead of a tightly wound together whole. For me, the novel was all over the place. A better writer would have either cut some of it out or done a better job of weaving it all together.

That said, there were certainly parts of the novel that sang. They could have stood alone as short stories. One such part was the episode when Jack and his best friends get lost at sea as teenagers. Another was the chapter in which Lucy teaches Leah how to dig up the Loggerhead Turtle eggs and re-bury them in safer territory. Unfortunately, as I stated above, each of these vignettes could have belonged in different novels or been published as short stories.

Lastly, I want to remark on one major irritant in this novel: the too-snappy dialogue. Jack's often ascerbic banter with his childhood friends when they re-encounter each other in Italy and in S. Carolina comes off contrived and movie-dialoguish. He always seems to have the perfect wiseacre come-back for every situation, and I found it rang false. A less posturing, more self-effacing and insecure Jack McCall would have seemed more realistic. No one is ever on such a witty roll every time they speak.

[Taury · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beach Music by Pat Conroy is a poignant exploration of family, loss, and redemption. Woven through the turbulent 1960s set in the coastal area of North Carolina. Conroy's lyrical prose captures the differences of relationships. The novel's characters and their stories make it an emotional read about the impact of past traumas and the healing power of love and forgiveness.

[Scott Lyons · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Let’s go down the hill and have a hell of a life, Jack.”

Add this to the list of books that made me cry.

I want to say, this book will not be for every one. It’s long, and it is not the type of book you can read quickly. It took me almost 3 weeks! I’ve read a couple of the negative reviews and they mostly talk about the story not being cohesive, too many story lines that don’t correlate, it’s melodramatic. I feel like that’s fair, you can say that… I disagree but those are our opinions.

Beach Music is a sweeping saga of a novel that is told from our main character, Jack McCall. After the suicide of his wife Shyla, he escapes his South Carolina life for Rome to raise his daughter from the past that haunts him. When his mother is diagnosed with leukemia, he comes back to face all the demons he’s tried to escape.

This book has many many themes and storylines. But, where many people struggled with this, I found it pivotal to the complete telling of Jacks story. Generational trauma, suicide, religion, love and loss, Vietnam war, the holocaust, terrorist attacks, and all the personal stories that surround these themes and events.

Pat Conroy was an absolute master storyteller, and this one pulled at every one of my heart strings. he’s also very witty and funny, and there aren’t many books that can make me laugh and cry! But this, was one!

[Negin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pat Conroy wrote the beautiful introduction to one of my all-time favorite books, “Gone with the Wind”. My rule with classics, not that I read them as often as I probably should, is to read the introduction after completing the book. Once I finished “Gone with the Wind” and then read Conroy’s introduction, I knew that this would be an author that I need to look into.

“Beach Music” is the first book that I have read by him. It grabbed me right from the start and I was hooked. Even though we were on vacation, it was often pretty much all that I could think about. Part of the story takes place in Italy, specifically Rome, and I finished this book right before we arrived there. Perfect timing!

Here’s a picture that we took of the Piazza Navona in Rome.


The writing is gorgeous. The story is riveting and had me laughing and crying. The characters are superb to the point where I missed them so very much after finishing the book. For me, that’s definitely a sign of a phenomenal book.

While reading, I looked up Pat Conroy and was amazed at how quite a bit of the story is similar to his own life. I was reminded of a quote by P.D. James: “All fiction is largely autobiographical and much autobiography is, of course, fiction.” I can’t wait to read more books by him. How sad that he’s no longer with us.

This is definitely my favorite book of 2018, and now one of my favorite books of all time.

Some of my favorite quotes:

“American men are allotted just as many tears as American women. But because we are forbidden to shed them, we die long before women do, with our hearts exploding or our blood pressure rising or our livers eaten away by alcohol because that lake of grief inside us has no outlet. We, men, die because our faces were not watered enough.”

“When you have been hurt you lose your trust in the world. If the world’s mean to you when you’re a child, you spend the rest of your life being mean back.”

“I don’t know why it is that I have always been happier thinking of somewhere I have been or wanted to go, than where I am at the time. I find it difficult to be happy in the present.”

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prior to reading Beach Music, I had only experienced Conroy in his reading memoir, My Reading Life. Since I knew he would be at the SC Book Festival, I spent most of my reading time this past week coming back to this book. I had started it on a beach trip with my sister over spring break, but some of the topics were a little too close to me at that time.

Jack, the main character in this novel, has lived in Rome with his daughter Leah ever since his wife Shyla committed suicide and he had a very close custody battle with Leah's grandparents. He is summoned home to Charleston because his mother has cancer, and the rest of the almost 800 pages go forwards and backwards in time, filling in all the pieces of the story he knows and some he doesn't know.

The parts seem disconnected at first, ranging from the Holocaust to Vietnam to a time at sea with a sting ray, but they all branch out from the central story in some way. One of the more active parts of the story have to do with his childhood friend Jordan, who everyone thought had died, and that helps to bridge the gaps between some of the others.

Pat Conroy is hard to fully comprehend for me. I have heard he has very similar themes in all his fiction - the dysfunctional family, the mental illness, the Holocaust and Vietnam, the landscape of the low country, the abusive father (and in this book everyone has an abusive father!) - but after seeing him speak and seeing him interact with his brothers and one of his sisters yesterday at the SC Book Festival, I don't really blame him. It is clear that his family history permeates every moment, and his family is important to him.



There is a sense of shocking reality to some of his writing, but then he will write these scenes of sheer unbelievability - dancing with his future wife as the ocean washes a house out to sea, a sea creature dragging the boat away, the magical rescue of the turtles - his writing is very poetic in these sections but it grated against the surrounding story to me. I wish he'd separated out his good ideas into 3 solid novels - one about the man going home after his wife's suicide, one about the boy thought dead, and one that had the more magical elements. It had the feeling of a forced epic, when the strength comes in the smaller elements - the conflicts between people, and the secrets in their histories.

For me, it was a shock and then a comfort to be reading a novel about someone going home after a long time away to be with a mother who has cancer, since that is what my summer looks like it will be. Despite all the other stories swirling around it, that was the story I paid the most attention to, and cared the most about. And the turtles, I really cared about the turtles. There is so much in here that I might read it differently in a different year, but I really need to read the book he wrote about his father next - The Great Santini. You can't escape contemporary southern literature without acknowledging Pat Conroy, and you can't escape the man himself if you are around anything book related in the state of South Carolina. He's a southern superstar.

[Jodie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really beautifully written story.
I've purchased this book no less than 4 different times. Every time someone saw it they wanted to borrow it and somehow it never got returned. My mother-in-law filched the last copy I bought and she SWEARS it belongs to her.

I picked up yet another copy to take away with me and read while traveling and am truly enjoying re-discovering just how wonderful it is to read Pat Conroy.

I'm so pleased to have picked this book up again. What a joy to read such artfully crafted prose. Conroy's writing is exquisite.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pat Conroy has done it again! A fantastic 5 star audiobook on cassettes! I could not stop listening to this novel until it was finished! Wow! Thanks to my Goodreads friends who recommended this masterpiece with their excellent reviews. My only regret is that it has taken me until today to find BEACH MUSIC and read it.
It is about love, childhood, dysfunctional families, horrors of World War II, abuse, growing up, university days, environmental issues, anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, priesthood, mental illness, leukaemia and death. The beautiful heartfelt writing and mesmerizing language of Pat Conroy drew me deep into this fabulous story.
To quote my friend Sharon, "He's skilled at creating characters that step off the page, into your life and linger in your memory."
I highly recommend this novel!
5 stars

[Minne · Rating 5 out of 5]

“No story is a straight line.”
“I will walk you into the corridors of hell and I believe you will find my tour memorable and complete.”

No one writes generational family trauma like Conroy. I am DAMAGED. My heart is so unsettled. I hate this book. I hate it. I want to hurt it, and yet I love it.

I love that Conroy’s stories are about ordinary people: their families, their histories, and the legacies that shape them. His narratives meander and unfold, drifting through the everyday and the extraordinary, the beautiful and the damning moments that define a life. It’s no mystery why his books are often long-winded. Honestly, anything less would feel incomplete.

Summary:

After his wife’s suicide, Jack McCall, leaves the south and his country in an attempt to escape the weight of his past and protect his daughter from the generational trauma that has defined his family.

When Jack receives troubling news about his mother, he is forced to confront both his family and his ghosts. What follows reveals the long-buried trauma behind his and his wife’s family histories.

Reading experience:

Conroy’s prose is as beautiful as it is haunting. I lived this story. The book is long, but I didn’t mind —except for the childhood fishing scenes, but I think this is inevitable with Conroy.

The story isn’t limited to Jack and his wife’s families, it also centers on the close-knit relationships they formed in childhood. There are many characters and many stories, which some readers might find overwhelming, but the way they’re told keeps them interesting and relevant. I especially loved Jack’s relationships with his friends, particularly Jordan.
I’ve always been drawn to stories about childhood friendships — perhaps because I didn’t have many of my own. You could always find me indoors with my nose buried in a book. It’s no secret that this kind of story always captures my interest.

I also enjoyed his picturesque descriptions of Italy, and Venice in particular as Jack and Ledare walked around the city.
It reminded me of scenes from one of my favorite films, Before Sunrise.

“They built this city so you’d never want to leave it, didn’t they, Jack?” Ledare said.
“No,” I said. “I think they are nicer than that. They built it so you’d always have something to dream about.”

Another thing I appreciated is the complexity of some of the characters: a judge who reads Tolstoy and rules against segregation, yet goes home to become a slave to the bottle and a terror to his wife and sons; a father who would kill his own family to save them. A man who is obsessed with saving his country but can’t see that his own home needs saving.

“I moved my hands along the worn set of Tolstoy and thought again about the irony of a father who loved Tolstoy but could not quite bring himself to love his own family.”

Part 5, chapter thirty-four was a punch to the gut. Some books deliver heartbreak in measured doses, others save it all for the end. Beach Music finds a place somewhere in between. It’s been years since I cried while reading a book. I don’t know what to do with myself, I think I need to be sedated.

Themes: the holocaust, anti-semitism, toxic masculinity, marriage, family trauma, grief, mental health, alcoholism, rape, child abuse, politics, religion, racism, homophobia

Quotes I absolutely loved:

“I should’ve loved you more and needed you less. You were the only things I ever got for free.”

“I think it happens but once and only to the very young when it feels like your skin could ignite at the mere touch of another person. I could not satisfy myself with her or get enough of the endless feast her body provided. You get to love like that but once.”

“There’s a kind of songbird too pretty to fly with the crows and the starlings. The other birds attack it in flocks and tear it apart when it starts to sing. Nothing soft endures. Nature loathes meekness and goodness. Shyla got hurt early and deep. You kept her from the bridge as long as you could, son.”

“American mothers teach their sons how to break a girl’s spirit without even knowing they are imparting such dangerous knowledge. As boys, we learn to betray our future wives by mastering the subtle ways our mothers can be broken by our petulance and disapproval. My own mother provided me with all the weaponry I will ever need to ruin the life of any woman foolish enough to love me.”

“Hitler meant nothing to me because of music and Sonia and my beautiful twin boys. When the newspapers disturbed me, I simply stopped reading the newspaper. When rumors flew wildly in the streets, I stayed indoors and commanded that Sonia do the same. When the radio made Sonia weep with fear, I turned off the radio and forbade its use. I refused to listen to the baying of the Nazi hound. Politics sickened and bored me.
“Then I heard scratching at my door, unprepared and in innocence, and saw the Nazi beast.”

“All the street names are covered with blood and the streets are all cobbled with the skulls of Jews. You are a Christian, Jack, and should feel right at home in this place. I hate your Christian face. I am sorry. I always have and I always will.”

“Ah! The Holocaust, Jack. Yes, that word again. That stupid word, that empty vessel. I am so sick of that word. It is an exhausted word that means nothing, and we Jews have shoved it down the world’s throat and dared anyone to use it improperly.… Holocaust. One English word should not be required to carry so many human hearts.

“We are not survivors. None of us. We were dice. We were thrown, hurled into the mouth of hell, and we learned that a human life was as worthless as a horsefly.”

[Aly Lauck · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s no secret that I read a lot. This book quickly shot up in the ranks of one of my favorites. I’m a sucker for multilayered, cathartic, interwoven stories. Somehow this book captures life in the low country south and the harrowing reminders of the Holocaust (yes, you read that right) as well as themes of loss, reunification, love, laughter…I could go on ad nauseum. Epic story. I didn’t want it to end and it’s 800 pages!!! I maniacally added all of the authors books to my TBR and am eager to start those. The character development was remarkable. I lost sleep over this one and regret nothing. Here comes a book hangover where everything else feels pedestrian…

[Randy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read Beach Music twice. After the first reading, 15 years ago, I decided it was one of the best books I'd ever read. Now, in 2010, I finally re-read it and came to the exact same conclusion. It is simply a brilliant, complex work that few writers other than Pat Conroy would even attempt to pull off.

Those who don't like the book usually focus on its length (nearly 800 pages), and what they call the "indistinguishable" brothers. When it comes to book length, my view is that a bad book at 50 pages is too long, but a good book at 1000 pages is a treasure. Length should not matter unless the book is clogged with irrelevant details or story lines. Beach Music isn't. As for the indistinguishable brothers, it's not their story--it's Jack's story. Yes, Conroy could have made Dallas, Dupree and Tee have more quirks, but who cares? The book is utterly rich with wonderful, memorable characters--Jack, Shyla, Lucy, Jordan, George and Ruth Fox, Max Rusoff, Capers, Leah and more.

I have read hundreds of fictional accounts of Holocaust experiences, but none as powerful as George Fox's story. The way Conroy has Fox tell it to Jack in one long uninterrupted monologue is riveting.

Finally, Conroy's evocation of the impact of the Vietnam War on college campuses (and Jack and his friends) at the turn of the 70's is not only hauntingly accurate with its instant radicals and infiltrating cops, it is the hub around which the entire brilliant narrative turns.

All Conroy's books are masterpieces. Beach Music deserves pride of place among them. In my opinion, it and South of Broad are his finest achievements.

[☮Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've had this book for a few years and kept putting it off due to its length. But I knew I'd have to read it someday just because of who the author is. I vowed that this summer would be the challenge.
I find any book over 500-600 pages to be a challenge, and my mind just can't stay focused that long. Supposedly this started out being 2000 pages, and I never would have attempted it then, so I should be grateful. While the writing and the words deserve 5 stars, I didn't care a lot for the story or the characters. I think this was very personal to Conroy with the suicide, the dysfunctional parents, the old college buddies, the Vietnam war, etc., and he had a lot to say. He made his points eloquently and with a flair only he could accomplish. I wish I could have felt more of a connection.
Also because of the length, I chose to listen to the audio, and really did not care for the narrator or his flat delivery.

[Terry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jack McCall has taken his daughter Leah to live in Rome after his wife’s suicide and a bitter custody battle with the wife’s parents. He and Leah are grieving, but eventually need to reconcile with the family left behind in South Carolina.

Conroy is great at creating and describing characters. Here he is describing his friends, especially the one named Jordan.

“ Jordan‘s gift was both madcap and daredevil, and while Capers came to distrust Jordan‘s recklessness, Mike and I prized it. Jordan‘s love of daring and his rash need to live on the edges of things, his reaching for experiences that went unnoticed by other people gave us adventures that summer that previously would have been unimaginable. Throughout his life, Jordan‘s greatest fear was that he would be buried alive in that American topsoil of despair and senselessness where one felt nothing, where being alive was simply a provable fact instead of a ticket to a magic show. It was not that Jordan was a thrill seeker, but that he found an elegance in action that he found nowhere else.“

As with all of his novels, you get the sense that he cares a lot about every word in every sentence, such as this one: “… a sense of smell was better than a yearbook for imprinting the delicate graffiti of time in the memory.“

I always love it when an author talks about writing in a novel. “No story is a straight line. The geometry of a human life is too imperfect and complex, too distorted by the laughter of time and the bewildering intricacies of fate to admit the straight line into its system of laws.“

This was for me a 4.5 star book, rounded up to 5. It was written about 30 years ago. It holds up well.

[Matthew · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was initially skeptical about starting up one of these "blockbuster" novels, but Beach Music's prologue was surprisingly well written and I found myself strangely captivated to read on. As a testament to the quality of that prologue, I waded through a couple hundred pages of overwrought and overweight storytelling just to find some closure on the Jack McCall's wife's suicide mystery. There would be times in my reading when I had to look away from the book because the prose would be so sentimental and contrived it was painful. For example, "At certain times in our lives, we crackled in the sheer electricity of our desire to be wonderful in bed...We set down feasts for each other and treated our loves with tongues of fire. Our bodies were fields of wonder to us." I don't want to meet the people who think this is an example of good writing.
However, Pat Conroy manages to tie all of the dozens of back-stories and personal dramas that he had been casting out together again near the two-thirds mark in the book. At that point, he thankfully backs off from trying to be an impressive writer and just settles in to being a capable storyteller. The highlights of that story for me were George Fox telling Jack about his experience in the Holocaust, the episode of Jack and his three friends stranded at sea, and Lucy McCall's childhood. I cringed whenever Jack would banter with his three indistinguishable brothers and one schizophrenic brother, and the Jordan Elliott story line could never lift all the narrative weight it was expected to shoulder.
I made it through all 768 pages not because I found Jack's healing process credible, not because I found the South Carolina backdrop endearing, not because I really cared why Shyla committed suicide, but because I was impressed by how Conroy brought all of the disparate parts of the story into a working whole. I won't read another Pat Conroy novel because there is too much good literature out there, but reading Beach Music was not a waste of my time.

[Elizabeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to like Pat Conroy’s Beach Music. Really, I did. The opening paragraph (a stunning, lyrical evocation of a young woman’s suicide) drew me into the sprawling, eight hundred page tome. At first glance, the book seemed to have all the elements of a rip-roaring good yarn: betrayal, forgiveness, intergenerational conflict, and a number of love affairs thrown in for good measure.

At the story’s start, we meet main character Jack McCall, who (with only his daughter, Leah, for company) is living in voluntary exile in Rome, after his wife Shyla’s suicide some years before. Shyla’s death resulted in a bitter custody battle over Leah between Jack and Shyla’s parents. Now, Jack hopes to raise his daughter as an Italian, with no knowledge of his native South or of the family that threatened to tear them apart.

However, Jack’s fragile peace is not to last. Through a series of preposterous circumstances (a private eye trails Jack and Leah through much of the novel’s first few chapters), Jack is forced to confront his past and, eventually, return to his home state of South Carolina.

This is where the story began to lose me. Just when things should have been getting good, the narrative fell apart. Instead of a single inciting incident, we get three: the private eye, it seems, was hired by Shyla’s sister, Martha, who wants Jack to return home and reunite with Shyla’s father, who may or may not have previously-unrevealed insights into Shyla’s suicide.

At the same time, Jack’s old friend, Mike Hess (now a wildly-successful film producer), pops up out of nowhere with Jack’s former girlfriend, Ledare, in tow. Mike, you see, also wants Jack to return home, though his motivations are somewhat different. Mike hopes that Jack will sign on to a new project of his, a movie about their South Carolina childhoods, and (at the same time) provide information about a mutual friend, Jordan, who died (or, some say, disappeared) after a Vietnam War protest gone bad.

As if that weren’t enough, Jack also receives a phone call from his brother, Dupree, announcing that their mother has leukemia and Jack is wanted at home. It’s a lot to keep track of, and Beach Music lacks the narrative structure necessary to make these disparate elements hang together. My main complaint regarding this book was that Pat Conroy seemed hell-bent on packing as many increasingly-strange tangents into its pages as possible, while giving no thought whatsoever to what these episodes had in common or what kind of story they were supposed to tell.

Beach Music does not lack for memorable scenes. Still vivid in my mind’s eye (a month or more later) is an astonishing episode in which a teenage Jack and his friends Jordan and Capers Middleton are stranded at sea for fifteen days after a manta ray destroys their motorboat. These scenes had me glued to the pages, in suspense, and would have made a terrific short story. But they have no relation whatsoever to the overall arc of the novel.

Also excellent are a scene in which Jordan (at twelve, the abused, terrified child of a Marine Corps Colonel) achieves a moment of quiet courage in a psychiatrist’s office and the truly heroic struggle of Jack’s mother, Lucy McCall and her brother, Jude, to escape the brutal poverty of their childhood. Yet, as I turned the book’s final pages, I was left wondering what exactly happened. I’m still not sure what the overall point of the novel was or how these scenes related to each other.

Compounding my dislike for the book are the main characters themselves. I’m all about flawed characters, but not one of the people populating Conroy’s novel came across as likable or even very sympathetic. In particular, Jack McCall himself came across as a big, overgrown child. A scene in which he launches into a screaming tantrum at his dying mother almost made me throw the book down in disgust and I failed to share his happiness at his eventual coming-to-terms with his past.

This occurs during a ludicrous mock trial at the end of the book. Staged by Jack’s friend Mike, for a bizarre home-movie, the main characters come together on stage to tell their version of the events that eventually drove them apart. In the book, it’s every bit as corny and overwrought as it sounds. While reading this climax (supposedly a moment of grief and reconciliation for all concerned), I was left rolling my eyes, wondering why one character, in particular, would chose to incriminate himself during a trial with no legal baring, whatsoever.

Beach Music might be worth reading if what you’re after is sheer entertainment or a way to kill time, but don’t commit to its eight hundred-plus pages expecting to bond with its large cast of characters or a satisfying resolution at the end. After such greats as The Lords of Discipline, Beach Music is a disappointment from Conroy, from whom I’ve come to expect much more. Certainly, it’s not a book I’ll be recommending or returning to anytime soon.

[Marialyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just absolutely loved this novel! It was a bit long but the characters are both warm and endearing. Pat Conroy is a fabulous author.

[Les · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Original Notes (1996):

The BEST!

I think this has to be one of the very best books I've ever read. I couldn't put it down and didn't want it to end. I want to read everything Pat Conroy has ever written. He writes the most beautiful sentences and I felt like I could see, hear, taste and smell everything he described. The characters became a part of me. I laughed. I cried. What a beautiful, lyrical book. I recommend it to everyone. Rod read it in a few days and enjoyed it, too.

My Current Thoughts:

As I grow older, my list of all-time favorite books grows by leaps and bounds. I have read dozens and dozens of 5-star books and would be hard-pressed to name my lifetime Top Ten. However, if it came down to it, Beach Music would most definitely be on that lifetime list. It is one of the first examples of lyrical writing I ever encountered and I can still picture scene after scene twenty years later. This is one of those books that I have always wanted to re-read, but have been afraid to, worrying that it may not live up to my expectations the second time around. I downloaded the audio edition, thinking I'd try going that route for a second reading, but now that Conroy has passed away, I think I'd like to honor his memory, his talent, and his craft and give the book another reading.

I have only read three of Conroy's novels: Beach Music, The Great Santini and South of Broad. I've watched The Prince of Tides, but have never read the novel. One book I'd really want to read is My Reading Life, which was published in 2010.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can count on one hand the number of books that have made me cry. This is one of them. I chose this book because its cold here in Minnesota this time of year and I wanted to be whisked back to warm South Carolina, a state I've been privileged to live in. South Carolina gets into your blood and so does Conroy. He's simply a master of words, some of his descriptions so achingly beautiful that I had to reread them just to see if I had imagined them.

This is a brutal book touching on the topics of the Holocaust and Vietnam with equal rawness. There were times when I had to put it down, the descriptions so harsh and real. But it was so necessary to go there.

This should be required reading for all high schoolers. This novel will stick with me for a long time.

[Ngaire · Rating 5 out of 5]

I fell in love with Pat Conroy's writing while on holiday at Hunting Island, South Carolina - it was accidental though, my professor at grad school had reccomended him and I thought it looked like a good meaty read for a beach holiday. I didn't have any idea that he sets most of his books there and is from there. But it just hooked me in and I could hardly put it down to even walk down to the beach from our camp site. This might very well be up there with Diana Wynne Jones's A Tale of Time City as my all time favorite book. It was just so beautiful and dramatic and nostalgic. I guess there are probably people out there who hate Pat Conroy, but I ain't one of them.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love almost anything by Conroy, but this - in my humble opinion - is his greatest masterpiece. My husband used to read this book to me when we were dating (he in Colorado and I in Athens, GA), and when we ran out of things to talk about, he would read to me about Jack McCall. Conroy tells some beautiful (albeit sometimes, heavy)stories. He paints gorgeous pictures of Italy, South Carolina, and some heartwrenching tales of the life of a man trying to escape his past. My favorite moment in the book, by FAR, is the depiction of Jon-Hardin holding all of his brothers hostage at the top of the Silas Pearlman Bridge (I think that's the right bridge...). I don't want to ruin it for you, but if you ever read it, you can know that that is my favorite part :)

[Natalie Richards · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very moving and descriptive. Conroy really knew how to write a great story.

[Sissy · Rating 4 out of 5]

To read a book by Pat Conroy is to come to the realization that so much of everything else I read, and think is good, is truly just an appetizer getting me ready for the main course -- which is what Conroy is. Every sentence you read lures you into the web of Conroy's storytelling. This is a book that will take you from the piazzas in Rome to the low country of South Carolina. You will fall so deeply in love with each setting that you couldn't possibly decide which place you would prefer to live.Readers say they tire of Conroy's "dysfunctional family" themes. Well, who hasn't got a dysfunctional family? It would be utterly boring to read about countless perfect, tidy unscathed families anyway!

While this is a book about tortured souls, it is also a book that holds great promise filled with love and hope and devotion and yes...redemption. We always talk about the books that will stay with us forever. This is one for me...music to my ears...Beach Music!

Favorite quotes:
The South’s got a lot wrong with it. But it’s permanent press and it doesn’t wash out.

Though I could write about the imperishable charms of Rome forever, I could not quiet that pearly ache in my heart that I diagnosed as the cry of home

“He could trim a gnat’s pubic hair at fifty feet” said Dallas. “That boy can handle a gun.”…lol