A few days ago I came to my best friend's flat and while he was giving me joint which I passed, and while he was sorting his decks in Hearthstone, he told me that I was addicted to emotions and that this is the reason why I need turmoil books. I took that roughly and straight to the heart. I lay on his bed, depressed and exhausted as he was saying things that I already know and that he constantly drills into my sober brain; that I have had really bad three years and that I need time to recuperate because this is how grief works – it needs remedy of patience and self-will to accept that just because I want peace, it won’t come hugging me. I mean he hadn’t said that, he said, ''Why aren’t you reading Tolle, instead you are wrenching yourself further with emo stuff.'' Well, fuck off, was my usual response. ''You walk around your fantasy game world dressed as little yoda lookalike gnome with neck piercings, healing other losers online, collecting spinach and hiding behind the big freakcreatures who are into conquering some fortress up in the air on some server in woods where The Black Dahlia Murder band is playing nursery rhymes. Like you have a clue about Pat Conroy.''Of course I took his second remark in a light way. That is just me nowadays. He looked at me at that point and without a blink added, ''It is good that you don’t smoke. Weed would be just wasted on you. Go back and feed your darkness and watch me being happy while you suffocate in your jealousy.'' And I self-combusted and pouted and started cooing like a wounded dove trying to find mental potions and lotions, ointments and salves. When I quit tossing on the bed, irritated that he was gently neglecting me, I tried to find that place inside of me where I don’t lament. It is there, just after so much time spent howling and mourning it is difficult not to see yourself as a very sobbing person. But I have that striking sinew of sheer joy and beautiful proudness of my own life inside of me, just it is currently still very small, little forgotten, mostly afraid that all is lost. Once you retreat into yourself, your body will nudge you to polish some other moonstones of your personality. Those wicked ones, hidden too. Like self pity. And those essential, like self preservation and the accent will be put on life support small things that you really trust. Small things, one crumb, one ray of light, one peck, bone breaking hug. My friend is an excellently built ex basketball player who has spectacular shoulders and immense patience to comfort, in the same time being the crudest person when I overly wallow. So he pointed finger to his window after he looked at me comatosed on his bed. ''Have you seen the sun today inside yourself made cave?'' And I was on the verge to say something cruel again and the sun didn’t manage to resurrect me, but Pat Conroy always does that and for that, I am always so grateful to him. To both of these guys. I read one of his books between a few years of silence period and I always end up with the one which mirrors my life and I burn like a paper kite. Glorious and fatal. Not at all ravishingly memorable as soon as grey ashes start falling on my nose and continue going downward to dry grass.I don’t mind dramatics that Conroy evokes in me since I have them installed and integrated already. So, how do you explain Pat Conroy to somebody who has never read any of his books? I always have the same troublesome awe and always the same acid heartache. Conroy nourishingly pulls me into his waters. I know him very well by now, and I know he is not a seducer and that he truly means all the best for me. But he pulls me under the surface and says, breathe, breathe. Now there. Breathe baby, breathe. And I do. And my needy tentacles find his sorrowful and mournful words and I stick my oxygen to them and through a straw I find a way to cope with myself better. It is an alluring story of Tom Wingo, English literature teacher and rugby coach as he deals with his twin sister who is the most famous feminist poet. But Savannah is suicidal. She lives in New York and Tom comes to her psychiatrist Susan Lowenstein to whom he starts unwrapping their memories which his sister has forgotten. He talks about growing up in South Carolina with Savannah and their older brother Luke. About parents and grandparents, his marital problems in Charleston and how he copes with monstrous currents of his childhood. Through the southern fire scars and through his geographical wounds I end up being hopeful and gratified. Conroy’s books always mitigate and balm, no matter how one life’s winds are blowing or breezing. American South has been described numerous times signed by different authors and their tragic people have all been inhumanely flawed but not all Southern books have the psyche. There was this part where siblings went to Miami and they’ve realised that Florida’s Atlantic was crystal clear and turquoise while they trusted their murky part of ocean only up to a point of touching their chest. Wingos are attuned to havoc and disfunctionality with the constant mellifluous voice of water all around them. And you submerge into Conroy’s incantation. Pat Conroy has never really had a rival in literature. You are knackered down with humility when you discover how reading 600 pages long poem feels like. He defined dolour, if you can understand it under all the foreshadowing. And it is miserable. Because you know it’s there. Not creeping in like a fog, not being two faced, not being sombre but being relentlessly severe and stone faced. It is there, you will put your whole faith into not falling into it, but the doom is there. And in the aftermath have faith again that the tragedy will find the angular ends which will not allow characters in this book to slit their wrists anymore. That the reader will eventually stop feeling intimately connected with the Wingos.What I take from this book is not similar family history or their mental diagnosis, so I’m not projecting myself. It is ambiguity. I can’t love this book more than I do. It gave me insight of the things I needed and it gave me reasons to think that life could be easier. Not in a parallel that there are less fortunate than me but in the realisation that forgiving yourself doesn’t have to be the hardest thing in the world.You are what you are because of your thoughts. And if you allow yourself, when the right moment comes you will survive the wounds of them.Simply mesmerising and healing book.
""Mi ricordo una sera d'estate: mia sorella, mio fratello ed io (eravamo molto piccoli e l'afa gravava come muschio sulla pianura) non riuscivamo a dormire. La mamma ci portò allora a fare due passi fino al fiume e alla darsena, benché Savannah e io avessimo un raffreddore estivo e Luke un eczema da calore. "Ho una sorpresa per i miei cocchi," disse la mamma mentre noi guardavamo affascinati un delfino prendere il largo nell'acqua tranquilla, metallica. Sedevamo sulla punta del moletto e, stendendo le gambe, cercavamo di toccare l'acqua col piede. "C'è una cosa che voglio farvi vedere. Una cosa che vi aiuterà a dormire. Guardate là, figlioli," disse, indicando l'orizzonte a levante. E, proprio in quel momento, dove essa indicava, la luna comparve, sollevando la fronte di uno stupefacente color oro al di sopra di una filigrana di nuvole che bordavano il cielo di veli. Le sere erano lunghe al sud, in quella stagione, e alle nostre spalle, in quello stesso momento, il sole stava tramontando in un tripudio di fiamme che incendiavano il fiume. Era come un duello di ori: l'oro nuovo della luna nascente, l'oro consunto del sole che scompariva all'altro capo del cielo. Così il giorno, dopo un'ultimo guizzo di danza sulle paludi della Carolina, moriva splendidamente sotto gli occhi di noi ragazzi, finché della luce dell'astro diurno non rimase che un listello intorno alle chiome delle querce acquatiche. La luna poi sorse veloce, come un'uccello che si leva dall'acqua, e salì in alto: fulva, poi gialla, poi giallino, poi d'argento, poi d'un miracoloso, immacolato pallore, al di là dell'argento, un colore che è proprio soltanto delle notti del sud. Noi bambini restammo estasiati di fronte alla luna che nostra madre aveva evocato dalle acque. Quando l'astro si fu inargentato, mia sorella Savannah, che aveva tre anni, esclamò "Oh mamma, fallo ancora!" E questo è il ricordo più antico che ho.""Su quanto mi piacciano le saghe famigliari se scritte bene.E il principe delle Maree e scritto bene, molto bene, così bene che a tratti mi ricordava Irving (ma sta tranquillo John, tu rimani sempre irraggiungibile).Tom Wingo è uno dei pochi personaggi maschili che mi stanno veramente simpatici, forse perché un po mi assomiglia in fondo, principalmente perché è una persona davvero molto ironica, tanto che più è incazzato o diffidente e meglio gli riesce, una "sagoma" insomma.E con un protagonista così le cose non potevano che migliorare.E se pensate che anche in questo caso ho la mia preferenza femminile, ebbene non vi sbagliate.Savannah è speciale, provare per credere, la madre non scherza (tra l' altro non so chi fra lei e mia madre sia più addentrata nell' arte del complotto famigliare)e Susan, beh di Susan diciamo che non ce ne sono molte in giro ;)Metteteci New York ( a cui proprio non resisto), e le regioni del South Carolina, che in quanto a fascino non sono da meno.E io direi che gli elementi per una buona lettura ci sono tutti :)
What do You think about The Prince Of Tides (2002)?
This is the book I would have loved to write if it already hadn't been written by Mr.Conroy. As such, it's going to be my first Goodreads' review even if I finished reading it for the first time some twenty years ago."My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call."There is something in this book that grabbed my attention from its very beginning and wouldn't let me go until its last page: A wounded main character seeking to make amends with himself (even if he doesn't know it when it starts); a dominant, possessive, to-some-extend-crazed mother that'll dominate her sons' lifes; the beautiful depictions of the south... This is a book about understanding and coping with what your childhood can do to your adult self.I may have been a tad too generous with the rating, I admit it. However, 'The Prince' really speaks to my heart and there are so many parallelisms between Lila Wingo and my grandmother, between good, I-always-do-whatever-I'm-suposed-to-do Tom Wingo and myself that I really couldn't rate it lower. Besides, there's also Mr.Conroy's prose to top it off: It's excellent.As for a plot snippet without many spoilers?Tom Wingo, a recently unemployed Literature teacher and sports coach who is about to see how his marriage crumbles, must travel to New York to help his sister's psychiatrist as she has (again) tried to commit suicide. To help her understand his sister and her motivations, Tom will have to unravel the Wingo's history to her: The deep South, brutalizing parents, a dark secret called Callenwood...It all starts as a way to help Savannah, his sister, but as the story progresses Tom will start to heal his hidden wounds as well.Even if you have seen the movie do yourself a favour and read it. There's so much missing in the film: Luke's history, the grandpas' plot, Conroy's fantastic prose... just to name three reasons. Read it and you'll fall in love with Tom Wingo.
—Jordi Vicens
I recently re-read this after many years. First, Pat Conroy is one hell of a writer. His prose is lyrical. I always say if Jimmy Buffet can set your words to music (The white porpoise comes to me at night, singing in the river of time . . .) then you are a heck of a writer.His books have so many plots it's always interesting to see the film adaptation.Te only thing that strikes me is how over the top every plot line is. Nothing ordinary ever happened to a Wingo. Or to any of Conroy's characters. They save the white porpoise; they're born in the storm of the century with the black midwife dying holding on to them; their grandmother travels the world; their grandfather carries a cross through town; the narrator immediately accepts the only black player on the team and runs for a touchdown, etc etc. etc to a point where it's almost numbing.Nevertheless, a highly recommended read.
—Bob Mayer
Before I wrote this, I took a cursory look at a few of the reviews and realized to my dismay that in this case I am the Grinch who took the roast beast. And yet I stand by my rating because this book was for me an exercise in maudlin pablum. The protagonist experiences all matter of tragedy in his youth, both quotidian and bizarre (an abusive wretch of a father, a venal socially climbing mother, a horrific yet nonsensical assault) and then grows up to have a mentally ill sister and a cheating wi
—Vanessa
