The Prince of Tides

Pat Conroy once said, "Great words arranged with cunning and artistry could change the perceived world of some readers." This book did that for me. Throughout the read, I felt wrapped in a velvet cloak of beauty and struggle woven by a master.   

Throughout the book, Conroy sets me in the narrator's struggle with how much someone can love their family despite the pain and anger they've caused. Especially with his mother, Lila, because he loves her as much as he hates her. It's a family epic of the highest order. I found it beautiful, brilliant, and brutal.

When Pat Conroy died in 2016, I knew what the late Southern gentleman-writer, Lewis Grizzard, meant when he wrote, Elvis Is Dead and I Don't Feel So Good Myself.

Pat Conroy understood the Southern male in ways that only fellow Southerners can know in all its fullness. I felt less Southern at his passing than I had felt in a long time. Pat Conroy was my better self as a Southern male. He understood me without knowing me.

The Prince of Tides protagonist, Tom Wingo, is undoubtedly filled with the simplicity and complexity, goodness and evil, connection to history that… show more.

The grappling with being from the South and the relationships that resonate with others. That Prince is someone who will one you will want to know, and understand his pain and pleasure. Walk those streets of Charleston and New York—similar peninsulas that might help you understand what life is like and has to offer. Go over those bridges with this book. 

This story, of restless Tom Wingo, his troubled twin sister Savannah, and their struggle to triumph over the tragic legacy of their childhood, is the most incredible account of sibling love I’ve ever read. It centres around a series of conversations between Tom and Savannah’s psychiatrist, Dr. Lowenstein, and no other novel has come close to describing the anger and frustration that I myself showed during the years my sister was being treated for her eating disorder. I am genuinely in awe of Pat Conroy, and his ability to put words together in such a beautiful way.

A resounding Southern family saga. A sins-of-the-father story told in the first person by one of the South’s most revered authors. The Prince of Tides is set on a barrier island off the coast of South Carolina and depicts the haunting secrets of the working class Wingo family in a multi-generational story rife with Southern nuance and now considered a literary classic. The story opens when narrator Tom Wingo flies from the South to New York to meet with his sister’s psychiatrist, and the astounding family saga unfolds from there.