Dysfunctional Family

The Prince of Tides 

by Pat Conroy

“Her library would have been valuable to a bibliophile except she treated her books execrably. I would rarely open a volume that she had not desecrated by underlining her favorite sections with a ball-point pen. Once I had told her that I would rather see a museum bombed than a book underlined, but she dismissed my argument as mere sentimentality. She marked her books so that stunning images and ideas would not be lost to her.”   ― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

This is the tale of a dysfunctional family where a violent father beats his wife and kids. Henry Wingo is a shrimper who plies the oceans off the coast of South Carolina in search of shrimp. He frequently blows through the meager funds he accumulates in ridiculous business ventures. His stunning wife, Lila, serves as both his victim and a cunning and guilt-inflicting mother.

The central characters in this family saga are brother and sister twins. Tom Wingo, a middle-aged man with a wife and three young girls who has recently lost his job as a high school English teacher and football coach, is one of the youngsters who tells the narrative. Tom alternates between remembering his childhood on the remote Melrose Island and his current life in Manhattan.

Tom promises to visit Savannah in New York City, where she resides, to take care of her while she recovers.  However, Tom discovers that his wife is having an affair just before he departs from his South Carolina home.  The gory sight of horror, rape, and carnage known only as "what happened on the island that day" finally sheds light on the sadness, pain, and emotional isolation the Wingo siblings experienced. Conroy skillfully handles a wide cast of characters and a complicated plot, but he betrays his credibility with a gimmick in which Tom relates the Wingo family saga to Savannah's therapist. 

Some readers might notice a poor imitation of Robert Penn Warren's potent evocation of the Southern myth in this work, while others would detect echoes of John Irving's baroque fantasies. The majority, though, will be carried along by Conroy's felicitous, frequently beautiful prose, his sarcastic observations on the nature of man and society, his love of the South's marshland region, and his talent for storytelling.

I enjoyed reading Conroy's book and couldn't help but admire the author's creative ability in creating this family. My understanding of the author's background has led me to believe that some of his real-life experiences served as inspiration for this fiction. That doesn't take away from how much I believe you will appreciate this well-told story.