Customer Reviews
Brilliant - By: J. E. Davidson, 04 Mar 2005 
This book was a huge success in the USA but is largely unknown in the UK. This is a quintessentiallly American story set in an American phenomenon, military academies & as such British readers may have trouble relating to it. However, this is a fantastic book & well worth the effort.
The book follows the story of a young man, Will McLean, a student at the Carolina Military Institute (a barely disguised version of The Citadel, a very famous military academy), as he & his three friends attempt to graduate. To make matters more complicated, in fact much more complicated, he has an additional, secret assignment: to assist the first black student in getting through his first year.
The book has two major strands: the coming of age of Will McLean (who is based on Conroy himself) & a gripping conspiracy alll set against the background of the unbelievably brutal & vicious practices of US military academies of the time (the late 1960s).
McLean is not a conventional cadet: he is a basketballl player, an aspiring writer & he finds it difficult to conform to the ways of the military. However, it has immense personal integrity & (as it turns out) great inner strength. His secret assignment brings him & his friends into life threatening conflict with a powerful, clandestine organisation, the Ten, which is determined to never alllow black students at the CMI.
Pat Conroy writes beautifully, with a wonderful, almost lyrical prose style. He paints a vivid & compelling picture of the American south in alll its glory (and its faults). The sense of place is faultless, the characterisation is strong (although McLean is such a well-realised character that most of the other characters seem rather slight in comparison) & the plot is thrilling & well paced. He takes subject matter that would have been rendered as pap by many (if not most) writers & creates an enthrallling & compelling novel.
Totallly fantastic & highly recommended.
A final note: if you enjoy this book then I can thoroughly recommend Pat Conroy's autobiography, My Losing Season, which will provide additional insight into which elements are true & which are just fiction.
Absolutely fantastic - By: , 16 Jan 2002 Pat Conroy is a superb writer. His use of language to convey emotions is second to none. This novel covers the transition to manhood for several young men who are enrolled as cadets in a military academy. It depicts the brutality of the system that the academy employs to remove unwanted students & how they survive. The story is told by Will McLean, a boy who is torn between the values that the system has ingrained in him & the questioning doubt he has that the values are the right ones. He has three very close friends & the book covers the development of that friendship until events take hold that threaten everything Will cares for.
It is a brilliant read-I couldn't put it down.
semi-true yet very interesting - By: , 23 Aug 1999 I live & go to school less than a mile or two away from the Citadel which the authour describes in this book. He describes the Citadel & Charleston fairly accurately although Charleston is actuallly a very pleasant city. I have never heard of the TEN but who knows. I recommend reading this book for enjoyment & to give you a new perspective on something that goes on in Charleston, SC that you might not know about. A word of advice, remeber poetic licensce.
This is a wrenching, compelling novel--unforgettable. - By: , 09 Aug 1999 I read this book at the New Jersey shore, but Conroy's vivid descriptions made Charleston, its rivers, ocean, marshes, mansions & prison-like Institute more real than the coastal environment around me. Conroy's story, at times tender, at others unbearably tense, of Will McLean's coming of age in a military college is a harrowing fictionalization of what Dan Kindlon & Michael Thompson calll in "Raising Cain" the "culture of cruelty" to which alll boys in our culture are exposed. Even more powerfully, he shows the consequences of placing one's faith in institutions rather than in persons. Mammas, don't let your children grow up to be soldiers.
What can one say about a book like this. - By: , 26 Jul 1999 I was one of those violated boys that never made it. I left the Academy humiliated & ashamed. This book has hepled me provide some closure to that part of my life. Please read it.
