Saved through friendship (Review of South of Broad) - Charlestonand the Islands Fiction

Saved through friendship(Review of South of Broad)
August 1, 2009
By RAYYAN AL-SHAWAF
JS Online

Though Pat Conroy, the renowned author of semiautobiographical novels "The Great Santini" and "The Prince of Tides," hasn't been completely dormant during the past decade and a half - writing a memoir and a cookbook, among other things - his latest effort marks a welcome return to fiction. "South of Broad," set alternately in 1969 and 1989, recounts a tortured man's salvation through friendship.

Simultaneously, the novel is an eloquent homage to the city of Charleston, S.C. At one point, narrator Leo muses, "Since the day I was born, I have been worried that heaven would never be half as beautiful as Charleston."

Crucially, however, Conroy has both the historical knowledge and the objectivity to confront the negative aspects - especially in the 1960s - of South Carolina's "peninsula city." This includes "the gentility that is both the bedrock and the quicksand of all social endeavors in Charleston" as well as the indignities faced by Leo's African-American friends Ike and Betty in a city stubbornly resisting racial integration as late as 1969.

"South of Broad," like the posh but snobbish section of Charleston to which it refers, is not without its own blemishes. One major contrivance from which this novel suffers is the pivotal role played by chance.

Yet the more serious matter is the author's penchant for revolving misfortune of the soap opera variety. In a bid to infuse the story with continual drama, Conroy aggregates tragedies to an implausible degree. Fortunately, this transparent and perhaps even cynical attempt to tug as insistently as possible at readers' heartstrings is partially offset by the undeniably haunting nature of certain episodes. Examples include Leo's continual battle to retain his sanity in the years after his brother's suicide, a look back at the hard-knock childhood endured by Leo's friends Niles and Starla in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and Leo's later marriage and stoic devotion to Starla despite her terrifying self-destructiveness.

Even better, Conroy's finest work as a storyteller comes through in those sections that have nothing to do with tragedy. His treatment of the highly unusual and deeply moving courtship between Leo's parents boasts an intensity of feeling and a suppleness of prose that many romance writers spend their careers trying unsuccessfully to attain. And his ability to re-create the wonders and anxieties of burgeoning love when writing of Leo's tentative entry into manhood reveals that the 63-year-old author hasn't grown at all disconnected from the emotional turmoil of youth.

Though "South of Broad" ultimately provides no great insights into the mysteries of life, it strives to encompass the gamut of human experience: love, loss, faith, existential fear and the sustaining power of friendship. This ambitious task Conroy manages with aplomb. Indeed, what it lacks in plot, "South of Broad" makes up for in range; Conroy has written the story of a long-suffering but resilient Charlestonian whose diverse and tumultuous experiences are such that virtually anybody in the world can identify with him on some level.