The Prince of Tides A Novel edition by Pat Conroy Literature Fiction eBooks
Download As PDF : The Prince of Tides A Novel edition by Pat Conroy Literature Fiction eBooks 
Pat Conroy’s New York Times–bestselling Southern drama about the destructive repercussions of keeping an unspeakable family secret
Tom Wingo has lost his job, and is on the verge of losing his marriage, when he learns that his twin sister, Savannah, has attempted suicide again. At the behest of Savannah’s psychiatrist, Dr. Susan Lowenstein, Tom reluctantly leaves his home in South Carolina to travel to New York City and aid in his sister’s therapy.
As Tom’s relationship with Susan deepens, he reveals to her the turbulent history of the Wingo family, and exposes the truth behind the fateful day that changed their lives forever.
Drawing richly from the author’s own troubled upbringing, The Prince of Tides is a sweeping, powerful novel of unlocking the past to overcome the darkest of personal demons—it’s Pat Conroy at his very best.
The Prince of Tides A Novel edition by Pat Conroy Literature Fiction eBooks
There is graphic violence and sexual content. However, none of it is gratuitous. It is well-used in telling the story. This is my FAVORITE novel. It is a challenging read, in that it is extremely evocative of deep emotion. Pat Conroy's writing is so lovely. I visited the southern part of NC Coast and northern part of SC coast almost every summer as a child. He makes you taste the salty air, feel the thickness of the humidity and cry for all the wronged people. He takes you back and forth through time in South Carolina, WWII and other places. This book made me confront some of my own repressed past. This is a harsh and extremely beautiful book. It will put you through the wringer and you will love every minute of the exquisite torture.Product details
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The Prince of Tides A Novel edition by Pat Conroy Literature Fiction eBooks Reviews
I bought this as a gift after I reread my own copy. This is one of my top ten favorite books -- of all times. I read roughly a book a week and this one has stayed in my heart for decades. I haven't seen the movie, don't want to. I want to remember these characters as written. RIP Pat Conroy. You were a master!
When I started Pat Conroy’s Prince of Tides I expected to get a good read based on the accolades Conroy’s books have gotten. What I didn’t expect was how much I loved the book. It really took me by surprise how much I got into the story and enjoyed reading the tumultuous, horrible, quirky and loving lives of the Wingo family.
Much of the credit goes to Conroy’s wonderful writing and narration. It’s was interesting how the writing was very poetic and lyrical but still had this casualness which made it easy to read and enjoy. Despite the expansive vocabulary (I’ve never had to look up so many words before), it didn’t bogged down the narrative making it difficult for you to want to continue reading. Conroy managed to eloquently convey the complicated relationships and feelings of the family at the heart of this story without having to make you work for it.
It also helps that the narration was full of self-deprecating and sarcastic humor from the book’s narrator, Tom Wingo. Imagine my surprise when a couple of paragraphs into my reading when Tom busts out some one liners and having some cheeky conversations with his 3 young daughters who all seem to share the same brand of humor as their dad. While Tom’s humor certainly helped make reading the story fun, it also served to reflect how his childhood has affected him. Through his voice, you come to see that he uses his humor to hide, express and deflect his issues stemming from his childhood. It makes Tom a character that is likeable and sympathetic but never one that you pity in spite of discovering the kind of the life he had growing up in Colleton.
Conroy created an interesting family that is at the heart of the story. Through Tom’s eyes you discover a family that’s full of contradictories and pain but has a great capacity for love. Each member of the Wingo family from the parents Henry and Lila to their children, Luke, Savannah and Tom, have their own distinct personalities that oftentimes cause clashes amongst themselves but enables them to understand each other in a way that no one else in their small town can. Their household is a battlefield in of itself and also their haven. As you read through the story, you find yourself often appalled at the behavior of the adults but then something will happen which you begrudgingly feel for them and get a small understanding of what drives them which you end up being like one of their children. You gain a certain love/hate relationship with both Henry and Lila which I suppose is par for the course with many families. Through the Wingo family’s trials and conflicts, Conroy encompassed the best and worst of living in a small Southern town with all the quirks that goes with it.
It was a pleasant surprise to have found a book that went beyond my expectations. Conroy wrote a story full of charismatic characters with a complex family dynamic that was filled with both heartache and love. His intelligent, eloquent and witty writing really made reading the book a joy and thoroughly kept me enthralled in Tom’s narrative. This is the sort of book that gradually pulls you in and quietly goes about its job of engaging you. This was an epic family story that didn’t have the feel of one which reflected the contradictory and complex nature of the story itself.
With bucolic imagery and transcending language, Pat Conroy’s timeless epic “The Prince of Tides” continues to hold its place atop the list of premier literary fiction achievements of the last half century; a work so masterful that others have aspired to but fallen mournfully short. Wistful, lyrical, intelligent while always maintaining a subliminally dark undercurrent, Conroy deftly manages an abundance of ever-changing plot lines full of varied and diverse characters to make this sprawling epic of a deeply flawed South Carolinian family become literally part of the readers consciousness; indeed for nearly two months and 700 pages, I too became a Wingo, dreading our relentlessly violent father Henry’s every appearance while at the same time being utterly confused and frustrated by our dismissive, socially rejected but still stubbornly upward seeking mother. It is this essence, this transcendence into the very culture of rural 1950s-1960s lower, indigent South Carolina upbringing that Conroy so overwhelmingly succeeds in here and that has helped characterize this work as a veritable leader of its genre.
Told in first-person, present day, by Wingo brother Tom, we’re introduced to the story as he’s summoned to New York after he’s told that his twin sister Savannah has attempted suicide “once again” (there may be a total number of attempts spelled out here but that really isn’t relevant to the plot). Leaving his wife who is knowingly having an affair with a local doctor and his three daughters, Tom is himself a rather sad case. Unemployed as a teacher and football coach, he carries heavy baggage as he’s introduced to Savannah’s psychiatrist Susan Lowenstein, herself a personally troubled but imminently professional practitioner of mental health disorders. Asking Tom to relate Savannah’s life story and experiences, Lowenstein hopes to gain perspective on her personal demons to somehow coax her out of her torment and make her whole again. It is the telling of Savannah’s, and by virtue the Wingo’s, life story then, that the plot unfolds.
Jumping between past and the present, we slowly see the Wingo’s tragic past unfold…violent, abusive father Henry, coupled with a mother that demands, at all costs, to hide any sign of their underprivileged status in their small community of Colleton. Dreaming one day of becoming part of the town’s elite women, Lila Wingo is forever oppressed by the town’s nobility, seemingly stuck in her marginal, low-class lifestyle. Never deterred from trying though, and always at the expense of her children’s emotional makeup, it is these misguided parental examples that infuse conflicting and dangerous patterns into their otherwise bright and intelligent personaes.
And in New York, as Tom slowly unpacks these revealing facts about their lives, he naturally becomes a tragic and then attractive figure to Lowenstein, who herself suffers from an unsatisfying marriage to a snobbish violin maestro who’s actually carrying on an affair with her own secretary. And as the story evolves, we learn of the many true tragedies that the Wingo’s were forced to suffer throughout their childhood, particularly one heinous episode that their mother incredibly refused them to ever discuss. We also learn of the fate of Tom and Savannah’s older brother Luke, perhaps the tragic martyr of the story, as he, possessing not quite the intellect that his siblings have, returns from Vietnam and engages in perhaps the true heartbreak of the story.
When attempting to summarize this review and while thinking about how so many other brilliant works fit a particular genre, it is then that I truly become appreciative of the genius of “Prince of Tides.” In it, there is, amazingly, something for virtually every class of reader. And particularly for the “literary fiction” aficionado, there are only but a handful of works in this class that exemplify “art” on this same level. I would offer that anyone wishing to become “well read” in the literary fiction cult pick this up immediately and savor its brilliance.
There is graphic violence and sexual content. However, none of it is gratuitous. It is well-used in telling the story. This is my FAVORITE novel. It is a challenging read, in that it is extremely evocative of deep emotion. Pat Conroy's writing is so lovely. I visited the southern part of NC Coast and northern part of SC coast almost every summer as a child. He makes you taste the salty air, feel the thickness of the humidity and cry for all the wronged people. He takes you back and forth through time in South Carolina, WWII and other places. This book made me confront some of my own repressed past. This is a harsh and extremely beautiful book. It will put you through the wringer and you will love every minute of the exquisite torture.
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