BEACH MUSIC

An absolute

epic on all fronts, Pat

Conroy presents the epitome of a magnum

opus with Beach Music. The novel follows Jack McCall

absconding to Italy with his young daugher in hopes of leaving behind

his depraved family after his wife commits suicide. Major news forces Jack to return to

Beaufort, South Carolina to learn that the same demons plaguing his own upbringing and his wife’s

depression will follow him until he confronts them. Friends and family prove to be necessary baggage, weighing Jack down

with the tools that will lead to happiness again. Through current events and flashbacks, Conroy spins painful tales from the rural South

to the Holocaust to the Vietnam war. An encompassing saga, Beach Music evokes every human emotion showing the spectrum of cruelty in war and man’s

hearts to the innocence in children and turtles returning to sea. Every paragraph is a poem in itself showcasing Conroy’s virtuosity of the English language. It oozes with his

themes of abuse, suicide, and the poetic beauty of tragedy. Arguably one of, if not, his finest, this novel seeks to set hearts on fire as two families and their friends navigate the painstankingly

blur of extreme agony and redemption.

Pat Conroy