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South of Broad by Pat Conroy held my attention although it wasn't that hard to put down and take a break. Full of characters, the primary one is the city of Charleston, South Carolina. It is lushly developed with Conroy's substantial vocabulary, and rarely does a place take on the character that Conroy's favorite city does.
The author chooses a clever way to develop his favorite character. The protagonist and narrator is a newspaperman who is writing his memoirs beginning with his life as a young teenaged newspaper boy. This gives Conroy the ability to describe the homes and characters along the newspaper route of Leo King, nicknamed "Toad."
It also provides more than a glimpse of the boy's mind as he recounts his traumatic experience of finding his idolized older brother's body drowned, suicidally self-mutilated, in their shared bathroom. Leo cannot deal with this tragedy and is admitted to a mental institution.
He continues to ruminate about the six other young people, new to Charleston, that he meets during his summer before starting high school. Along with three Charleston natives who have gotten into some minor drug trouble, they all become friends. Four of these are emotionally disturbed with lives that began in tragedy. None of these characters are developed fully to my satisfaction like Leo is. Conroy focuses more on their behaviors and victimization than on character. He tells the reader a lot about what they say and how they look, but little about what's going on in their emotional lives.
There is a tremendous amount of drama that happens over a period of 20 years, but all of it during high school, or mid-life. I wasn't even sure what the career was for one major character, Niles, who originally came from the North Carolina western mountains, until near the end when it was casually mentioned. The intense drama includes childhood sexual molestation, alcoholism, a murderous perverted father, exciting football games, a cold distant mother who is also the high school principal, a Hollywood star, a wayward wife, Hurricane Hugo, suicide, a perverted Catholic priest, and a search in San Francisco for one of the friends who is a lifelong effeminate homosexual dying of AIDS and kidnapped by a villain who is taking his welfare money. Whew!
There is just too much of one thing throughout this novel and not enough of another.
Everything is tied up in the denouement, however, although two of the glamourous friends have had tragic endings. Everyone else ends up with the spouse they began with. Except for Leo, our narrator. But even then, there is a small hint that there is a woman for him waiting in the wings.
The real story here is the relationship between a man and his city. I quote from one of the last pages when Leo, now a middle-aged man takes a bike ride along his old newspaper route, "I am riding hard through the most beautiful streets in America, my native city. I know I have to cure myself with Charleston. There is nothing that the Holy City cannot right...I ride past concealed gardens flush with morning glories, ligustrum, white oleanders, and lavender azaleas galore."
Yet, I read the entire book which is on the lengthy side. The lushness of the descriptions of Charleston was one thing I enjoyed, and the dialogue was another. I admired the structure. Overall, I couldn't help but think that Conroy was writing about himself. That would have been enough to satisfy me without adding so many tragic characters to create a literary overload in hopes of producing a best seller. You have so many fans, Mr. Conroy, that just your last name guarantees a best seller. I'm glad I read your book because now I can see Charleston with more appreciative eyes.
