{"id":4558,"date":"2010-10-19T15:20:04","date_gmt":"2010-10-19T21:20:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/?p=4558"},"modified":"2010-10-19T15:20:04","modified_gmt":"2010-10-19T21:20:04","slug":"good-reads-south-of-broad-by-pat-conroy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/19\/good-reads-south-of-broad-by-pat-conroy\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Reads: South of Broad, by Pat Conroy"},"content":{"rendered":"

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South of Broad<\/a> is set in Charleston, South Carolina, and that beautiful city plays an important role in the novel.\u00c2\u00a0 Charleston native Leopold Bloom King (Leo, for short) grows up in the shadow of his older brother Stephen, until Stephen’s tragic death.\u00c2\u00a0 The tragedy shakes his family to the core, and leaves Leo mentally unstable and lonely.\u00c2\u00a0 Never the popular kid, Leo finds himself befriending other outsiders and new kids at his high school where his cold, Ulysses<\/a> loving mother is the principal.\u00c2\u00a0 This group of misfits includes 3 orphans, 2 of Charleston’s richest kids (kicked out of the their private school for using drugs) and a set of theatrical twins with a mysterious past.\u00c2\u00a0 The story begins in 1969, the year Leo’s high school is integrated, and racism and class divisions are both significant topics in the novel.<\/p>\n

We are introduced to all of the characters, then the story flashes forward 20 years to a knock on the door that changes everything for this group of friends.\u00c2\u00a0 The book moves back and forth between 1969 and 1989, and I really enjoyed seeing the characters as high schoolers and as grown ups.\u00c2\u00a0 It was interesting to see what became of each of them (who married who, their professions) , then to read a flashback to learn how they got to where they are in 1989.\u00c2\u00a0 One of the things I love most about this book are the rich character descriptions, particularly that of Leo.\u00c2\u00a0 There are 10 friends in the “group” plus a handful of additional characters, but I had no trouble keeping them straight since each is very unique.<\/p>\n

This is one of those amazing stories that I could read over and over again, and that’s not something I say often.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m looking forward to checking out some of Pat Conroy’s other novels, particularly The Prince of Tides<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Have you read any of Pat Conroy’s novels?\u00c2\u00a0 What did you think of them?\u00c2\u00a0 What are you reading now?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Disclosure: I have not been asked to review this book.\u00c2\u00a0 It was just a great book that I wanted to share with you.\u00c2\u00a0 The links in the post are Amazon Affiliate links.
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<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South of Broad is set in Charleston, South Carolina, and that beautiful city plays an important role in the novel.\u00c2\u00a0 Charleston native Leopold Bloom King (Leo, for short) grows up in the shadow of his older brother Stephen, until Stephen’s tragic death.\u00c2\u00a0 The tragedy shakes his family to the core, and leaves Leo mentally unstable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4558"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4569,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4558\/revisions\/4569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepickyapple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}