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nonna7 's review for:
The Great Santini
by Pat Conroy
This book was written when the author was 30 and the maturity is amazing. This is a book of fiction based on his own family, particularly his father. I had a hard time reading this. As I read this I marveled at a man who could write about his father with affection and dislike and even hatred all at the same time. I have been on something of a Pat Conroy kick. I read The Water Is Wide, his book about teaching on a remote Gullah island. I also read his book “My Reading Life” which was really inspiring. The man was a prodigious reader. In Santini, we meet Ben Meecham and his family dominated by Bull Meecham, a Marine flyer and LtCol who has been passed over for promotion more than once and who is taking command of a squadron of pilots at a base in South Carolina. His family is moving to the new base after spending a year in Atlanta living with their grandmother. Ben and his siblings miss her and aren’t looking forward to their father coming home at all. He is physically and mentally abusive to his wife and children. There was a movie made. I don’t plan to watch it. The book was hard enough to read to be honest. Conroy’s family was horribly scarred as a result of his abusive father. One of his siblings committed suicide. There are some funny scenes but all in all it is an incredibly sad book. Conroy’s books all have a similar vein running through them. He spent his writing life trying to exorcise his childhood. It’s a really wonderful book that acknowledges the pain of children who love, hate and fear a parent.