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—"South of
Broad," by Pat Conroy; Doubleday (514 pages,
$29.95)
———
Pat Conroy's first novel
in 14 years offers readers great dollops of
psychological distress against a backdrop of Charleston
society. Hurricane Hugo tears through "South of
Broad," but the 1989 storm that wrecked Charleston
hardly matches the novel's emotional turmoil.
Conroy has drawn
characters of such devastated psyches that his novel
brings to mind a concept for a reality TV show: Toss so
many emotionally damaged contestants together in a
famously uptight antebellum city. Then sit back and see
who comes undone.
He writes of a
high-school clique, nine friends close since their
senior year in 1969, the year when Charleston schools
finally capitulated to court-ordered integration. They
were unfettered by racism or homophobia, with two blacks
and an extremely out gay fellow in their circle. Still,
Chad, the least tolerant among them, looks down on
everyone, clinging to the pathological sense of
entitlement inherent among the aristocracy that inhabits
the lovely old mansions south of Broad Street.
The rigidity of
Charleston society, its resistance to change, provides
an undercurrent throughout the novel, but this is a
story about disparate friends coping with the hurts of
childhood. It's also an epic exploration of wretched
parenting. Among these 11 we have a father who was a
bigamist and a drunken, neglectful, mendacious mother.
Another mother, impregnated at 13, murdered her husband.
Another father, his values rooted in the 19th century,
disparages his daughter. And then we have a psychopathic
killer of a dad who has dedicated his evil life to
tormenting his kids.
Various members of the
clique have been raped as children or abandoned by their
families and consigned to a Charleston orphanage. And a
pedophile priest floats around the periphery.
At the center of the
novel is Leo King, saintly in his honor and loyalty to
his friends but unloved by his mother, who still prefers
his older brother, a suicide. The brother's inexplicable
death looms as the crushing, lifelong burden for Leo,
who during the course of the novel spends two stints in
a mental ward.
Back in his unhinged days
in high school, Leo was described by a psychologist as
"terrified, depressed, anxious, ashamed, totally
confused and possibly suicidal." That's just page
67, with 467 more pages of mental anguish to come.
Leo's overwrought sense
of honor begins to look like martyrdom when he marries
one of his nutcase friends on the slim chance that he
can improve her unhappy life. The wife, instead,
disappears for months at a time, occasionally calling
her husband to taunt him about her sexual exploits.
A plot unfolds amid all
this human wreckage as the grown friends, including a
troubled sex goddess of a movie star, have a sort of
"Big Chill" 20-year reunion before embarking
together on a dangerous mission to San Francisco to
rescue their estranged gay friend from the clutches of a
thieving scoundrel.
Whether a reader enjoys
an unrelenting exploration into wounded psyches is, of
course, a matter of taste. What makes "South of
Broad" bearable for those who don't particularly
enjoy such journeys is Conroy's prose, with its vivid
descriptions of Charleston and the city's stifling
social order. "It is a city of contrivance, of
blueprints; devotion to a pattern that is like a bent
knee to the nature of beauty itself."
And "South of
Broad," for all the sad characters, is a funny
book. Conroy's characters fairly burst with repartee. In
another life, he could have written dialogue for Hepburn
and Tracy:
"Anglicans teach
that drinking is the fastest way to approach God.
Charlestonians think it's the only way. What's wrong
with our theology?"
"Join us in a drink
and we'll talk about it, Chad."
"Let me do the
honor. I'll even bring it to your chair."
"I like it when
you're sycophantic, Leo. It's so rare these days."
"I try not to make
it a habit, Chad. You like it too much."
"I think it's the
natural order of things."
Conroy, author of four
previous novels including the bestsellers "Beach
Music" and "The Prince of Tides," two
memoirs, a biography and a cookbook, again pours on
sentimentality as thick as Frogmore Stew. He so
obviously loves his characters and all their foibles.
Some readers might relish a crueler turn.
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