Summary from GoodReads:

In his most brilliant and powerful novel, Pat Conroy tells the story of Tom Wingo, his twin sister, Savannah, and the dark and violent past of the family into which they were born. Set in New York City and the lowcountry of South Carolina, the novel opens when Tom, a high school football coach whose marriage and career are crumbling, flies from South Carolina to New York after learning of his twin sister’s suicide attempt. Savannah is one of the most gifted poets of her generation, and both the cadenced beauty of her art and the jumbled cries of her illness are clues to the too-long-hidden story of her wounded family. In the paneled offices and luxurious restaurants of New York City, Tom and Susan Lowenstein, Savannah’s psychiatrist, unravel a history of violence, abandonment, commitment, and love. And Tom realizes that trying to save his sister is perhaps his last chance to save himself. With passion and a rare gift of language, the author moves from present to past, tracing the amazing history of the Wingos from World War II through the final days of the war in Vietnam and into the 1980s, drawing a rich range of characters: the lovable, crazy Mr. Fruit, who for decades has wordlessly directed traffic at the same intersection in the southern town of Colleton; Reese Newbury, the ruthless, patrician land speculator who threatens the Wingos’ only secure worldly possession, Melrose Island; Herbert Woodruff, Susan Lowenstein’s husband, a world-famous violinist; Tolitha Wingo, Savannah’s mentor and eccentric grandmother, the first real feminist in the Wingo family. Pat Conroy reveals the lives of his characters with surpassing depth and power, capturing the vanishing beauty of the South Carolina lowcountry and a lost way of life. His lyric gifts, abundant good humor, and compelling storytelling are well known to readers of The Great Santini and The Lords of Discipline. The Prince of Tides continues that tradition yet displays a new, mature voice of Pat Conroy, signaling this work as his greatest accomplishment.

My Review:

There are some books that claim to be big family saga-type stories but just.. aren’t.  Then there are books like East of Eden by Steinbeck and The Colour by Rose Tremain that blow the socks off the reader and remind us what sagas really are.

The Prince of Tides is yet another to add to the list of mind-blowing, toe-curling sagas.

From the very start of this book, where smart-mouthed Tom begins to tease his children, put down himself and attempt to flee from his own mother’s phone call, this book had me hooked.  The smart, wise-cracking mouth of Tom, his self-loathing, his pain was made evident in just a few short pages.  And then, with the introduction of Lowenstein, the psychiatrist treating Tom’s suicidal sister, Savannah, a story begins to emerge that’s filled with so much heart-twisting drama, I couldn’t tear myself away from the book because I had to know what happened, I had to know why a boy who adored his mother couldn’t stand her any longer and why a twin sister wanted nothing to do with her twin brother.

This story tore my heart out.  I sat on my sofa and wept as key elements of the story were finally revealed, but it never got to be too much, because of Conroy’s masterful storytelling.  Just when the tension and the drama would reach that uppermost limit, just when I felt I needed to step back and compose myself, he would switch from the past, from Tom’s story, to the present-day and remind me of just who Tom was again.  Each time I would see a little more of the character who developed due to his past.

The characters in The Prince of Tides are so incredibly dynamic and real, I hated to leave them behind.  It was like leaving behind a friend, someone I’d journeyed with through amazing tension and drama and then had to say goodbye just when things were starting to look good again.  I was so impressed with this novel and laugh when I think about how naive I was when I began it – thinking that it was just another hyped up book and hoping it would move quickly so I could put it down and say that I’d read it.

I’ll be revisiting this story again though, and I’m sure again and again.  It’s too powerful not to read through it more slowly the next time and savor the beauty of the writing and the exquisiteness of the story development.

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