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The Prince of Tides (Paperback)
by The Prince of Tides
| Category:
Fiction |
| Market price: ¥ 108.00
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¥ 98.00
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Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
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| MSL Pointer Review:
Conroy’s writing takes you places with beautiful prose, and his depth of character only makes you feel empathy in times of sorrow, and joy in the good times. |
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Author: The Prince of Tides
Publisher: Bantam; Reissue edition
Pub. in: December, 1987
ISBN: 0553268880
Pages: 672
Measurements: 6.9 x 4.2 x 1.1 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00468
Other information:
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- Awards & Credential -
A towering bestseller with more than 5 million copies sold, from one of the most beloved American authors |
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- MSL Picks -
Pat Conroy's novel, which is a long read if you've seen the book or if you've read it, is a rich and romantic story telling of the lives of Tom Wingo, a Southern man with a dark past, and his love affair with New York psychiatrist Susan Lowenstein. But then novel is much more than that. It looks at the world of children, innocent in play and fancy in imagination, their trauma with an abusive father, issues of morality and of parental love. The novel is very narrative, Tom Wingo is a character whose mind can fill an entire palace of memories. There are many elements of the story that people nowaday can relate to. Look at the characters of Tom's mother, his sister Savannah and the charming urbane Dr. Lowenstein and her father-deprived son and you will see how closely connected to reality this novel can be. It is a romance, and in fact, in its depiction of an affair almost close to Bridges of Madison County. This novel will make you cry, will make you think and will warm your heart. So pick up a copy and read it before bed, perhaps listening to the music of Bach, who is the favored composer of Dr. Lowenstein's son.
Conroy writes Susan and Tom's story of love and understanding with major depth. He doesn't simply make it a happy ending but one of lost fates; if only they had met early on in life. It's a wonderful novel that all people on all walks of life can relate to, especially the ones who weep a fate lost. The reader is able to close his or her eyes and to place themselves into the mind of Tom Wingo to live out his life just as it was written. And for that I am greatful because it's been a long time since any novel has made me do that.
(From quoting Edina Nikovic, USA)
Target readers:
General readers
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- Better with -
Better with
The Lords of Discipline
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Customers who bought this product also bought:
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The Great Santini (Paperback)
by Pat Conroy
A wonderful author who brings his characters to life with a grace, humanity and humor rarely seen in modern literature. |
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Beach Music (Paperback)
by Pat Conroy
Beautiful writing, gripping characters, a book showing why Conroy has been regarded as America’s most beloved storyteller.
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The Lords of Discipline (Paperback)
by Pat Conroy
A haunting classic. Conroy’s combination of precise military cadence and southern gothic prose is just mind-boggling. |
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The Water Is Wide (Paperback)
by Pat Conroy
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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Cry, the Beloved Country (Oprah's Book Club) (Paperback)
by Alan Paton
A compelling novel that allows people of all cultures to see through the eyes of those that suffer under opression and injustice. |
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Pat Conroy is the bestselling author of The Water is Wide, The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, The Prince of Tides, and Beach Music. He lives in Fripp Island, South Carolina.
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From the Publisher:
Pat Conroy has created a huge, brash thunderstorm of a novel, stinging with honesty and resounding with drama.
Spanning forty years, this is the story of turbulent Tom Wingo, his gifted and troubled twin sister, Savannah, and the dark and violent past of the extraordinary family to which they were born.
Filled with the vanishing beauty of the South Carolina lowcountry as well as the dusty glitter of New York City, The Prince of Tides is Pat Conroy's most magnificent novel yet.
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Chapter One
It was five o'clock in the afternoon Eastern Standard Time when the telephone rang in my house on Sullivans Island, South Carolina. My wife, Sallie, and I had just sat down for a drink on the porch overlooking Charleston Harbor and the Atlantic. Sallie went in to answer the telephone and I shouted, "Whoever it is, I'm not here."
"It's your mother," Sallie said, returning from the phone.
"Tell her I'm dead," I pleaded. "Please tell her I died last week and you've been too busy to call."
"Please speak to her. She says it's urgent."
"She always says it's urgent. It's never urgent when she says it's urgent."
"I think it's urgent this time. She's crying."
"When Mom cries, it's normal. I can't remember a day when she hasn't been crying."
"She's waiting, Tom."
As I rose to go to the phone, my wife said, "Be nice, Tom. You're never very nice when you talk to your mother."
"I hate my mother, Sallie," I explained. "Why do you try to kill the small pleasures I have in my life?"
"Just listen to Sallie and be very nice."
"If she says she wants to come over tonight, I'm going to divorce you, Sallie. Nothing personal, but it's you who's making me answer the phone."
"Hello, Mother dear," I said cheerfully into the receiver, knowing that my insincere bravado never fooled my mother.
"I've got some very bad news, Tom," my mother said.
"Since when did our family produce anything else, Mom?"
"This is very bad news. Tragic news."
"I can't wait to hear it."
"I don't want to tell you on the phone. May I come over?"
"If you want to."
"I want to only if you want me to come."
"You said you wanted to come. I didn't say I wanted you to come."
"Why do you want to hurt me at a time like this?"
"Mom, I don't know what kind of a time it is. You haven't told me what's wrong. I don't want to hurt you. Come on over and we can bare our fangs at each other for a little while."
I hung up the phone and screamed out at the top of my lungs, "Divorce!"
Waiting for my mother, I watched as my three daughters gathered shells on the beach in front of the house. They were ten, nine, and seven, two brown-haired girls divided by one blonde, and their ages and size and beauty always startled me; I could measure my own diminishment with their sunny ripening. You could believe in the birth of goddesses by watching the wind catch their hair and their small brown hands make sweet simultaneous gestures to brush the hair out of their eyes as their laughter broke with the surf. Jennifer called to the other two as she lifted a conch shell up to the light. I stood and walked over to the railing where I saw a neighbor who had stopped to talk to the girls.
"Mr. Brighton," I called, "could you make sure the girls are not smoking dope on the beach again?"
The girls looked up and, waving goodbye to Mr. Brighton, ran through the dunes and sea oats up to the house. They deposited their collection of shells on the table where my drink sat.
"Dad," Jennifer, the oldest, said, "you're always embarrassing us in front of people."
"We found a conch, Dad," Chandler, the youngest, squealed. "He's alive."
"It is alive," I said, turning the shell over. "We can have it for dinner tonight."
"Oh, gross, Dad," Lucy said. "Great meal. Conch."
"No," the smallest girl said. "I'll take it back to the beach and put it in the water. Think how scared that conch is hearing you say you want to eat him."
"Oh, Chandler," said Jennifer. "That's so ridiculous. Conchs don't speak English."
"How do you know, Jennifer?" Lucy challenged. "You don't know everything. You're not the queen of the whole world."
"Yeah," I agreed. "You're not the queen of the whole world."
"I wish I had two brothers," Jennifer said.
"And we wish we had an older brother," Lucy answered in the lovely fury of the blonde.
"Are you going to kill that ugly ol' conch, Dad?" Jennifer asked.
"Chandler will be mad."
"No, I'll take it back down to the beach. I can't take it when Chandler calls me a murderer. Everyone into Daddy's lap."
The three girls halfheartedly arranged their lovely, perfectly shaped behinds on my thighs and knees and I kissed each one of them on the throat and the nape of the neck.
"This is the last year we're going to be able to do this, girls. You're getting huge."
"Huge? I'm certainly not getting huge, Dad," Jennifer corrected.
"Call me Daddy."
"Only babies call their fathers Daddy."
"Then I'm not going to call you Daddy either," Chandler said.
"I like being called Daddy. It makes me feel adored. Girls, I want to ask you a question and I want you to answer with brutal honesty. Don't spare Daddy's feelings, just tell me what you think from the heart."
Jennifer rolled her eyes and said, "Oh, Dad, not this game again."
I said, "Who is the greatest human being you've encountered on this earth?"
"Mama," Lucy answered quickly, grinning at her father.
"Almost right," I replied. "Now let's try it again. Think of the most splendid, wonderful person you personally know. The answer should spring to your lips."
"You!" Chandler shouted.
"An angel. A pure, snow-white angel, and so smart. What do you want, Chandler? Money? Jewels? Furs? Stocks and bonds? Ask anything, darling, and your loving Daddy will get it for you."
"I don't want you to kill the conch."
"Kill the conch! I'm going to send this conch to college, set it up in business."
"Dad," Jennifer said, "we're getting too old for you to tease us like this. You're starting to embarrass us around our friends."
"Like whom?"
"Johnny."
"That gum-snapping, pimple-popping, slack-jawed little cretin?"
"He's my boyfriend," Jennifer said proudly.
"He's a creep, Jennifer," Lucy added.
"He's a lot better than that midget you call a boyfriend," Jennifer shot back.
"I've warned you about boys, girls. They're all disgusting, filthy-minded, savage little reprobates who do nasty things like pee on bushes and pick their noses."
"You were a little boy once," Lucy said.
"Ha! Can you imagine Dad as a little boy?" Jennifer said. "What a laugh."
"I was different. I was a prince. A moonbeam. But I'm not going to interfere with your love life, Jennifer. You know me, I'm not going to be one of those tiresome fathers who're never satisfied with guys his daughters bring home. I'm not going to interfere. It's your choice and your life. You can marry anyone you want to, girls, as soon as y'all finish medical school."
"I don't want to go to medical school," said Lucy. "Do you know that Mama has to put her fingers up people's behinds? I want to be a poet, like Savannah."
"Ah, marriage after your first book of poems is published. I'll compromise. I'm not a hard man."
"I can get married anytime I want to," Lucy said stubbornly. "I won't have to ask your permission. I'll be a grown-up woman."
"That's the spirit, Lucy," I applauded. "Don't listen to a thing your parents say. That's the only rule of life I want you to be sure and follow."
"You don't mean that. You're just talking, Daddy," Chandler said, leaning her head back under my chin. "I mean Dad," she corrected herself.
"Remember what I told you. Nobody told me this kind of stuff when I was a kid," I said seriously, "but parents were put on earth for the sole purpose of making their children miserable. It's one of God's most important laws. Now listen to me. Your job is to make me and Mama believe that you're doing and thinking everything we want you to. But you're really not. You're thinking your own thoughts and going out on secret missions. Because Mama and I are screwing you up."
"How are you screwing us up?" Jennifer asked.
"He embarrasses us in front of our friends," Lucy suggested.
"I do not. But I know we're screwing you up a little bit every day. If we knew how we were doing it, we'd stop. We wouldn't do it ever again, because we adore you. But we're parents and we can't help it. It's our job to screw you up. Do you understand?"
"No," they agreed in a simultaneous chorus.
"Good," I said, taking a sip of my drink. "You're not supposed to understand us. We're your enemies. You're supposed to wage guerrilla warfare against us."
"We're not gorillas," Lucy said primly. "We're little girls."
Sallie returned to the porch, wearing an off-white sundress and sandals to match. Her long legs were tanned and pretty.
"Did I interrupt the complete lectures of Dr. Spock?" she said, smiling at the children.
"Dad told us we were gorillas," explained Chandler, removing herself from my lap and mounting her mother's.
"I cleaned up some for your mother," Sallie said, lighting a cigarette.
"You'll die of cancer if you keep smoking that, Mama," Jennifer said. "You'll choke on your own blood. We learned that at school."
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Detroit Free Press (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
A masterpiece than can compare with Steinbeck's East Of Eden... Some books make you laugh; some make you cry; some make you think. The Prince of Tides is a rarity: It does all three. |
San Francisco Chronicle (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
A big sprawling saga of a novel, the kind Steinbeck used to write, the kind John Irving keeps writing, the kind you can hole up with and spend some days with and put down feeling that you've emerged from a terrible, wonderful spell. |
Chicago Tribune (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
A brilliant novel that ultimately affirms life, hope and the belief that one's future need not be contaminated by a monstrous past. |
Publishers Weekly (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-05 00:00>
A seductive narrative, told with bravado, flourishes, portentous foreshadowing, sardonic humor and eloquent turns of phrase... For sheer storytelling finesse, Conroy will have few rivals. |
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