South of Broad [ROUGH-CUT EDGE]

South of Broad Charleston, S.C., gossip columnist Leopold Bloom King narrates a paean to his hometown and friends in Conroy’s first novel in 14 years. In the late ’60s and after his brother commits suicide, then 18-year-old Leo befriends a cross-section of the city’s inhabitants: scions of Charleston aristocracy; Appalachian orphans; a black football coach’s son; and an astonishingly beautiful pair of twins, Sheba and Trevor Poe, who are evading their psychotic father.

The story alternates between 1969, the glorious year Leo’s coterie stormed Charleston’s social, sexual and racial barricades, and 1989, when Sheba, now a movie star, enlists them to find her missing gay brother in AIDS-ravaged San Francisco. Too often the not-so-witty repartee and the narrator’s awed voice (he is very fond of superlatives) overwhelm the stories surrounding the group’s love affairs and their struggles to protect one another from dangerous pasts. Some characters are tragically lost to the riptides of love and obsession, while others emerge from the frothy waters of sentimentality and nostalgia as exhausted as most readers are likely to be. Fans of Conroy’s florid prose and earnest melodramas are in for a treat. (Aug.)

South of Broad [ROUGH-CUT EDGE] Review

I was very excited to get an advance copy of “South of Broad” through a friend of the authors. Conroy has been one of my favorite authors since I read the excellent “The Prince of Tides: A Novel” Years ago. The author is one of the best at developing living breathing characters that you actually care about and can believe in. This is the story of a diverse group of teenagers, from Charlston, SC, who form a friendship in the late 1960s having to grow up under the changes of that time period. They are a diverse group but all come from a particular place and a particular time. Over the following twenty years Conroy portrays the life and times of each of the characters in dramatic fashion. And the characters do live pretty dramatic lives from the legal profession to the music industry and Hollywood. But they all come from the same place yet with different backgrounds (the privileged to the struggling, from black and white). Within the story racism, religion, love, and lust are all explored . In the end they are all brought back together to face test none of the ever expected that will test the bonds of the friendships. Great, engaging fiction; fans of Conroy will be very pleased!

For more great character development I have to recommend Misfits Country Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable brought to life!

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