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The Water Is Wide (平装)
by Pat Conroy
| Category:
Fiction |
| Market price: ¥ 108.00
MSL price:
¥ 98.00
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| Stock:
In Stock |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
A novel that gets you fired up about the ills and wrongs of society and makes you want to change the world. |
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AllReviews |
1 Total 1 pages 8 items |
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Houston Chronicle (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-08 00:00>
Reading PAT CONROY is like watching Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel. |
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The New York Times (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-08 00:00>
A hell of a good story. |
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An American reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-08 00:00>
I knew this would be the perfect book to read this summer. I first caught a glimpse of "Conrack" playing one morning on AMC, then I found this book on the shelves by some kind of kismet. As I perused the pages, I was immediately drawn into the humid, lush island environment that Conroy deftly describes. There's a paragraph in the beginning of the book that I read over and over, it was such a wonderfully and lovingly written homage to the beauty and wonder of this magical place. The rest of the book was equally great, and was a wonderful learning experience for me. It taught me many things, but most of all it taught me how great storytellers tell great stories. The lessons that the writer and the reader learn together in the telling of the tale are fairly self evident, and don't need to be retold here. It is a brave book, told by a courageous and extraordinary writer and man. I didn't take a vacation this summer, but I read The Water is Wide. And it was one of the finest trips I've ever taken. |
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Charles Harrell (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-08 00:00>
As usual, Pat Conroy spins a good yarn that will keep you riveted to the book. As a son of the South, he tells his story of the challenges of overcoming the prejudices of the day to educate black children. He does a masterful job of letting the reader know that one of the greatest challenges is culture. His portrayal of the Gullah speaking island inhabitants is a fair one based on fact rather than myth. Great book, one of his best. |
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Walker Rowe (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-08 00:00>
Somebody else already attacked the other reviewer for calling this book a novel. This memoir is fact. But the other writer wrote that Pat Conroy went to Yamacraw Island to fight "institutional racism", blah, blah, blah. That misses the point entirely.
Pat Conroy was a native of the South Carolina coast. Being a writer he took the job of being a school teacher at Yamacraw because he wanted to teach. That would give him time to write. And living on Yamacraw would give him something to write about.
Pat Conroy is the author of The Lords of Discipline, The Great Santini, The Prince of Tides, and Beach Music. Fans of these novels should add The Water is Wide to their bookshelves.
In this memoir the young Pat Conroy takes a job teaching black children on Yamacraw Island. There is no road there so he takes a boat to work each day. The school kids are pretty much illiterate. Complicit in the neglect of the school-from a materiel point of view-is the headmistress. Representing the status quo do-nothing school board, she is just like the matron in George Orwell's novel The Clergyman's Daughter. Just like in the same novel, Pat Controy, the bright new school teacher, comes along with some new ideas and is able to achieve some positive results in the classroom. The bureaucrat in the way laments Conroy's efforts. She says he should just beat them. That's the only way to instill discipline she says.
I think that Pat Conroy might have come to Yamacraw to live the contemplative live of a writer. But he soon is embroiled in controversy and busy fending off the headmistress and bewildered parents. But his skill as a teacher is he is able to mollify his critics. The apogee of his success is when he organizes his retinue for a field trip to Savannah. This is one of the most enjoyable and most worrisome parts of the book as he and the kids have a great trip, but Conroy must jump through hoops to get the requisite signatures from all of the parents. For some of the kids this is their first trip off the Island.
One should not look upon the people of Yamacraw with pity as I am sure Pat Conroy did not. What ruined their lifestyle, he clearly points, out is the pollution of the Savannah River which wiped out the crab population there and the islander's livelihood. (Probably the crabs have rebounded now with the Clear Water act and other efforts to curtail nitrogen and other emissions.) Rather Conroy's look at the Island is whimsical-i.e. he has a fondness for the winding creek and the expanse of marshes, the live oak forests, and the simple life of the agrarian dweller. He genuinely grows fond the of kids under his kids. As was his goal, all of this provided greater fodder for his memoir.
The only criticism I have of Pat Conroy is he seems to have strayed from literature and gone commercial. The Lords of Discipline was a great yarn about life at the Citadel. But I refused to read Beach Music because it seemed to use the same backdrop of South Carolina as a setting and theme one time too many. Not being a writer with the skills of Faulkner - who kept his focus on one tiny county in Missisippi - I think Conroy could have gone elsewhere after he wrote The Prince of Tides. Maybe he is one of these writers like Tom Wolfe (of Asheville and not the Richmond writer) who can only write autobiographical books.
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Patricia (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-08 00:00>
This is a true account of Pat Conroy's year of teaching on an island he calls Yamacraw which actually is the island of Daufuskie, one of the coastal islands of South Carolina. Daufuskie is close to Hilton Head, but the difference between them is night and day. While Hilton Head is completely modern and developed, Daufuskie is still natural, beautiful, serene, quiet and tranquil. Because the 20th century basically ignored this small island, time seems to have stood still. The students he taught, cut off from modern society, knew almost nothing of events outside their narrow and impoverished life. Conroy attempted to expose the students to a world outside of the island. While the main theme is education, a secondary and strong theme is life on the island. This book is well written. It was read after my visit to Daufuskie where I saw the school he taught in, and experiencing that really brought the book to life. |
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MacNeil (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-08 00:00>
Published in the 1970's, The Water Is Wide was the first of author Pat Conroy's novels to be adapted for the big screeen, that project being Conrack, starring Jon Voight. Conroy's uproaringly hilarious and, at the same time, heartbreakingly honest and moving story-telling should be read first to catch the spirit that the film doesn't totally harness. Conroy spent a year on the improverished, virtually isolated and forgotten Yamacraw Island off the South Carolina coast as teacher to an economically and socially devastated group of children, most African- Americans, that the outside world seems to have cast off and neglected until Conroy reaches shore. Little does he know on arrival just how desperate his pupils lack even the basics of life, and he gets a clue when his children, unable to pronounce their teacher's name, instead come up with Conrack. But through an ingenuity as an educator and an even greater gift to tap into the souls of his destitute pupils, Conrack manages to lift the veil of ignorance and instill in his wards a thirst for knowledge. In powerfully moving story-telling fashion that will invoke both laughter and tears, Conroy teaches us just how much one person can make a difference in a life of another who has been left behind. And at the same time, Conroy manages to instill in his readers a sense of compassion for the status quo that most of us are blessed enough not to endure. Well worth a read once and again, The Water Is Wide masterfully bridges the gap between classes and races and implores each of us to exericse our humanity for the good of the lesser of our children. |
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Ben Dewolfe (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-08 00:00>
This is a great book for many reasons. One of my favorite parts of this book is the dialogue between Conroy and the kids of the Island. It is hilarious! I laughed out loud on quite a few occasions. The personalities of the students come alive. Conroy's descriptive writing is mesmerizing, and the deeper themes are also emotionally captivating. Anyone who has been a teacher will be able to relate to Conroy's idealistic dreams and his frustrations about teaching a difficult population of students. This is definately worth your time! |
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1 Total 1 pages 8 items |
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