Southern Reading Challenge Update

I finished Maggie's Southern Reading Challenge earlier this week. As you might recall, I compiled a list of 13, but only needed to read three in the three month period. Here's what I wound up choosing (click on the titles to go to my reviews):

gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson (Georgia)

Up Island by Anne Rivers Siddons (Georgia)

The Great Santini by Pat Conroy (South Carolina)

Unfortunately, none of these were terribly impressive, and I'd be hard pressed to pick one over the other.

Thank you, Maggie, for hosting this challenge. I'm going to hang on to my list just in case you decide to do it again next year.

The Great Santini

The Great Santini by Pat Conroy
Contemporary Fiction
Finished on 8/20/07
Rating: 2.5/5 (Fair)
TBR Challenge #6
Southern Reading Challenge #3



Book Description

The Astonishing Autobiographical Bestseller By The Author Of Beach Music

Today his family would be called dysfunctional. Bull Meecham -- fighter pilot, warrior, juggler, clown and bully -- a hard-drinking terror of a man who calls himself The Great Santini -- actually hides behind his misnomer. His swaggering mask is all Marine, and entitles him to be the absolute ruler of his family, which he handles with all the tenderness and understanding of a drill sergeant shaping up a class of new recruits.

Bull's wife, Lillian, is a beautiful steel magnolia -- without her cool head and infinite patience, the family would fall apart. Ben, at eighteen the oldest of Bull and Lillian's three children, is a natural athlete whose best never satisfies his father. As Ben struggles to become his own man against the intimidation of his father, he's forced to stand up, even fight back, against a man who refuses to give in.

Bull Meecham is undoubtedly Pat Conroy's most explosive character -- a man you should hate, but a man you'll come to love, in this stingingly authentic production.

I never came to love Bull Meecham, but as the book drew to a close, I began to reconsider my initial opinion of the novel. While reading The Great Santini, I couldn't help but compare it to Beach Music, the only other work of Conroy's I've read. From my journal, dated September 1996, I wrote:

THE BEST! I think this has to be one of the very best books I've ever read. I couldn't put it down and didn't want it to end. I want to read everything Pat Conroy has ever written. He writes the most beautiful sentences I have ever read. I felt like I could see, hear, taste and smell everything he described. The characters became part of me. I laughed. I cried. What a beautiful, lyrical book. I recommend it to everyone!

So why did it take me 11 years to pick up another book by Conroy? Did I have some inkling that Beach Music was the best of lot?

Unfortunately, there's just no comparing The Great Santini to Beach Music. Instead of lyrical prose, I found verbosity. Rather than endearing and memorable characters such as Jack McCall and his mother Lucy, I found nothing but crude vulgarity in Bull. The long, drawn out details of several basketball games grew tiresome, whereas the lush details of Italy and South Carolina drew me in to worlds I've come to long for even after all these years.

When asked to name my favorite books, Beach Music immediately springs to mind with no hesitation. I've wanted to read it again, yet fear it won't live up to that magic one feels when reading a gem for the first time. I had hoped to capture that feeling once again when I picked up The Great Santini. Sadly, I was disappointed. My first inclination was to say this is an awful book. However, looking back I think Conroy is superb storyteller. He created a realistic family and a believable character in Bull, who was a dispicable father, husband and human being, and I cringed at his words as often as his actions. I held my breath, hoping for a better outcome, wrapped up in Ben's world and desire to simply make his father proud.

I've wrestled with my reaction to this novel, wondering why I hesitate to recommend it or give it a higher rating. I think it boils down to the disturbing nature of the story. Sure, I've read upsetting novels that I've loved and gone on to rave about to anyone who'll listen (The Book Thief is the first that comes to mind), but this is a portrait of a family (albeit a dysfunctional family), and we all have families. As children, we desire our parents' love and approval and as parents we teach and guide our children while providing them with love and assurance. I know what family is, whereas the terrors of war are distant and somewhat removed from my daily life. I can read a book such as The Book Thief and appreciate the harrowing tale of the Holocaust, yet still love the story. In reading The Great Santini, I felt nothing but disgust for the chauvanistic bully and bigot portrayed by Bull Meecham. That disgust interfered with my overall appreciation of the narrative, but not so much that I couldn't finish. And there were, afterall, beautiful passages sprinkled here and there.

A favorite passage:

The next day Ben received a phone call from a Coach Murphy who said he heard from some of his players that the Arlington Jaycees had cut one hell of a baseball player and that he would consider it a personal favor if Ben would come play for his team. That was the beginning. And as Ben walked along the edge of the salt river, he realized that he wore the memory of Dave Murphy like a chain and it carried him like a prisoner to the infields of Four Mile Run Park in Arlington, Virginia, where he played for the Old Dominion Kiwanis for two of the best years of his life. In the night games, beneath the arc of lights, in his last year of Little league, Ben's new spikes gleamed like teeth as he walked toward Dave Murphy. For years Ben had walked toward him in dreams and sudden thoughts. If he could, Ben would have told him about the soft places a boy reserves for his first coach, his unruined father who enters the grassless practice fields of boyhood like a priest at the end of life. Coach Murphy was gentle. Yes, that was it. Gentle to the clumsy, girl-voiced boys whom he trained to be average, to be adequate, as he hit the soft fungoes to the outfield green. But Dave Murphy had a gift. Any boy who came to him had moments of feeling like a king. Any boy who played for the Old Dominion Kiwanis. Any boy. Coach Murphy still haunts the old fields where his boys bunted down the line, and with graceless fever took infield in voices that cried out for fathers. Going home after practice, they waved good-bye to their coach as they slid their spikes on the sidewalk, astonished at the fire that sprang from their feet. Then they turned toward home, toward the real fathers who waited for their sons to come homeward disguised as heroes.

Hmmm. Perhaps I would've found more to love had The Great Santini been about baseball (which lends itself to poetic prose, not to mention my love for the game) rather than basketball.

The Great Santini is a work of fiction, but how much is really a retelling of Conroy's own childhood? I'll have to give My Losing Season a read and compare details. I've had an Advanced Reader's Copy in my stacks for close to five years. Now I'm eager to give it a read.

Go here for more on Pat Conroy, the author, the man and the child.

Up Island

Up Island by Anne Rivers Siddons
Contemporary Fiction
Finished on 6/26/07
Rating: 3/5
TBR Challenge #5
Southern Reading Challenge #2


It's been almost six years since I discovered Anne Rivers Siddons and her remarkable saga, Colony. I loved that book and felt as though I'd found another Rosamunde Pilcher in Siddons. I went on to read Islands and Sweetwater Creek, but neither impressed me nearly as much as Colony (Islands earned a 3/5 rating; Sweetwater a 2/5). The House Next Door was quite good, but more of a horror story than Siddons' typical works.

And now I've read Up Island. It wasn't a bad read, but it certainly wasn't another Colony. I enjoyed it for the most part (although toward the end, I found myself getting impatient, wanting to be finished and on to something else). Siddons is quite a descriptive writer, but I wouldn't go so far to say she's a lyrical author (Pat Conroy and Rosamunde Pilcher are two who do excel at painting a vivid picture in my mind's eye).

Only one favorite passage to share (and only because it speaks to the reader in me):

After that I went over to the Black Dog and bought bread and sweet rolls and had a bowl of Quahog chowder for lunch, then treated myself to a couple of sturdy Black Dog sweatshirts. The air, even at noon, had a pinch to it. They would feel good on chilly mornings. Walking back to the Ford I passed the Bunch of Grapes bookstore and, on impulse went in. I had planned to find a library for my reading material; books were one expense I thought I could forego. But I came out laden with both paperbacks and hardbacks, thinking with delight of the moment when I slipped between my silky old sheets and turned on my new reading lamp and opened a new novel. Home: leisurely reading in bed would always be, for me, one of its cornerstones.

I still have several other books by Siddons to read, but this one is off to the used bookstore. If I'm going to re-read any of hers, Colony is at the top of the list.

gods in Alabama

gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson
Contemporary Fiction
Finished on 6/10/07
Rating: 3/5
Southern Reading Challenge #1




From the Publisher:

When Arlene Fleet headed off to college in Chicago, she made three promises to God: She would never again lie, never fornicate outside of marriage, and never, ever go back to her tiny hometown of Possett, Alabama (the "fourth rack of Hell"). All God had to do in exchange was to make sure the body of high school quarterback Jim Beverly was never found. Ten years later, Arlene has kept her promises, but an old schoolmate has recently turned up asking questions. And now Arlene’s African American beau has given her a tough ultimatum: introduce him to her family, or he’s gone. As she prepares to confront guilt, discrimination, and a decade of deception, Arlene is about to discover just how far she will go to find redemption--and love.

*************************************

When it became obvious I wasn't going to nap, Burr began a game of What Have I Got in My Pocketses that lasted us all the way to Nashville. This was a game we'd invented, and we played it in the car and sometimes on slow winter afternoons in front of the fireplace at his bachelor pad. We would each make up a long, complicated story. Burr usually finished his first. When he had the plot points down, he would tell me half the story and give me some background on the characters so I knew who was who. The catch was, the stories were always told backwards. So Burr would start at the end and trace events back through time until he got to the middle. Then he would stop telling it and say, "What have I got in my pocketses?"

I had to listen carefully, and he had to tell a story with an ending so inevitable that I would then be able to tell him the first half of his story. Not only able to -- forced to. The end had to come out of one possible beginning.

And this is exactly the manner in which Jackson tells her tale.

I fear I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, but once again I feel this is a case of a book not living up to the hype generated by fellow readers. I enjoyed parts of the story, but my overall reaction was mild disappointment. The narrative was a bit uneven and it took a long time before I started to care about any of the characters. A few readers have indicated that Jackson's second novel, Between, Georgia, is better than this debut work and while I plan to give it a try, I won't rush out and buy a copy any time soon. Having said that, I have to say I did enjoy the handful of humorous comebacks by Arlene's boyfriend. Every time I started to think about quitting the book, I'd find myself laughing out loud at Burr's dry wit, plunging back into the narrative with hopes that it'd improve. What a shame the humor was inconsistent. Overall I give it a big meh.

For those interested, Lisa over at Bluestalking Reader has posted a lovely interview with Joshilyn here.