But I doubt he needed to resort to much hyperbole, there are plenty of outrageous egos and stories that are authentic. Many people wonder if Conroy exaggerated. Many military men are not good sports, competition is life or death to them. Met more than a few "Great Santinis", watched the one-on-one scenario acted out with daughter of fellow officer, she whipped her dad & suffered verbal abuse. Packed the car and moved from place-to-place, 18 times. I stood watch, I raised kids alone while husband was deployed both as an officer and later as a Navy "dependent" wife. I went through training, I served with Marines, I went to chief's initiations, officer happy hours, Mess Dinners, Navy & Marine Corps birthday balls, and so forth.
The difference from reading this as a young woman with family in the military, and then as an older woman after serving in the Navy as an officer and also being married to a Naval officer and raising kids both while on active duty for 12 years & as a "dependent" wife overseas gave me so many different perspectives. Re-read this with On the Southern Literary Trail. However, I'd start with The Prince of Tides and not this one. That said, Conroy's descriptions are amazing, as in other books he's written. The action is too bogged down by these tangential subplots. What happens after the girl is raped? Why should the reader care about the high school basketball tryouts? A thorough editing and pruning would make for a much shorter book, but one that is cleaner and much more fluid. What's different about this novel is that there are a lot of plot points that are dropped and never picked up again. Again there are pages of descriptions of high school sports. Again there are themes of forgiveness and redemption and racial tension. Again there is the angry, abusive father and the rather ineffective mother who is mostly concerned about what the neighbors think. Conroy seems obsessed with the idea of a Southern family trying to navigate the high school experiences of a sensitive son and a smartass daughter. Pat Conroy is one of those writers who can write only one story (John Irving and Amy Tan come to mind, as well).
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