The Death of Santini, Pat Conroy
The Death of Santini, Pat Conroy
5 Rating(s)
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The Death of Santini
The Story of a Father and His Son

Author: Pat Conroy

Narrator: Dick Hill

Unabridged: 15 hr 12 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/29/2013


Synopsis

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A painful, lyrical, addictive read” (People) by the cherished author of The Great Santini that brings his extraordinary career full circle
 
Pat Conroy’s great success as a writer has always been intimately linked with the exploration of his family history. As the oldest of seven children who were dragged from military base to military base across the South, Pat bore witness to the often cruel and violent behavior of his father, Marine Corps fighter pilot Donald Patrick Conroy. While the publication of The Great Santini brought Pat much acclaim, the rift it caused brought even more attention, fracturing an already battered family. But as Pat tenderly chronicles here, even the oldest of wounds can heal. In the final years of Don Conroy’s life, the Santini unexpectedly refocused his ire to defend his son’s honor.
 
The Death of Santini is a heart-wrenching act of reckoning whose ultimate conclusion is that love can soften even the meanest of men, lending significance to the oft-quoted line from Pat’s novel The Prince of Tides: “In families there are no crimes beyond forgiveness.”
 
Praise for The Death of Santini
 
“A painful, lyrical, addictive read that [Pat Conroy’s] fans won’t want to miss.”—People
 
“Conroy’s conviction pulls you fleetly through the book, as does the potency of his bond with his family, no matter their sins.”—The New York Times Book Review
 
“Vital, large-hearted and often raucously funny.”—The Washington Post
 
“Conroy writes athletically and beautifully, slicing through painful memories like a point guard splitting the defense.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
 
“A brilliant storyteller, a master of sarcasm, and a hallucinatory stylist whose obsession with the impress of the past on the present binds him to Southern literary tradition.”—The Boston Globe

About The Author

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) was the author of The Boo, The Water Is Wide, The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, The Prince of Tides, Beach Music, The Pat Conroy Cookbook: Recipes of My Life, My Losing Season, South of Broad, My Reading Life, and The Death of Santini.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jessica on March 05, 2016

If you've never read Conroy, there's no reason to read this book. If you've read some Conroy, it may look interesting but I don't know if it would hold you. If you've read nearly all Conroy (like me) it's basically essential, even though it's much like Conroy himself: a mix of brilliant and maddening.......more

Goodreads review by Don on November 04, 2013

If Pat Conroy writes it, the star rating will always be five. Conroy says this is his last goodbye in books to his dad and mom. It will be interesting to see how he shapes the books yet to come. This last book met my expectations of a great book, but it stands somehow unique to me. First, he is more......more

Goodreads review by Neva on December 12, 2013

I can't decide which I dislike more Pat himself, his mother, his father, his sister or this horribly rambling and egotistical book. If you want to feel good about your own family this holiday season you might want to read this but I wouldn't recommend it.......more

Goodreads review by Aly on October 10, 2024

Wow! Definitely recommend you read his books (at least the great santini) before diving into this. All these familial relationships make more sense. A tough childhood, but amazing to see the beauty he created with the ruins.......more

Goodreads review by Laura on December 19, 2013

This book left me cold on many levels. First of all the writing just isn't that great. It's so overblown and flowery at some points that it reminds me of a precocious high school student's writing. In addition, he is downright petty. Oh no, he would never write a negative review of the works of his......more


Quotes

The Death of Santini instantly reminded me of the decadent pleasures of [Conroy's] language, of his promiscuous gift for metaphor and of his ability, in the finest passages of his fiction, to make the love, hurt or terror a protagonist feels seem to be the only emotion the world could possibly have room for, the rightful center of the trembling universe....Conroy’s conviction pulls you fleetly through the book, as does the potency of his bond with his family, no matter their sins, their discord, their shortcomings.” —Frank Bruni, The New York Times Book Review

“In several of his 12 previous books, bestseller Conroy mined his brutal South Carolina childhood—most directly in the book that became a 1979 hit movie, The Great Santini, about a violent fighter pilot and his defiant son. In this memoir, the 68-year-old sheds the fictional veil, taking ‘one more night flight into the immortal darkness to study that house of pain a final time.’ The result is a painful, lyrical, addictive read that his fans won’t want to miss.” People, 3 ½ out of 4 stars
 
“Despite the inherently bleak nature of so much of this material, Conroy has fashioned a memoir that is vital, large-hearted and often raucously funny. The result is an act of hard-won forgiveness, a deeply considered meditation on the impossibly complex nature of families and a valuable contribution to the literature of fathers and sons.” —The Washington Post

“Conroy remains a brilliant storyteller, a master of sarcasm, and a hallucinatory stylist whose obsession with the impress of the past on the present binds him to Southern literary tradition.” —The Boston Globe

“Conroy has the reflective ability that comes only with age. He has a deeper understanding of his father and the havoc he brought to his family.…But against the backdrop of ugliness and pain, Conroy also describes a certain kind of love, even forgiveness.” —Associated Press

“Conroy writes athletically and beautifully, slicing through painful memories like a point guard splitting the defense….It is a fast but wrenching read, filled with madness and abuse, big-hearted description and snarky sibling dialogue — all as Conroy comes to terms with what he calls ‘the weird-ass ruffled strangeness of the Conroy family.’” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
 
“A heady, irresistible confusion of love and hate, ‘one more night flight into the immortal darkness to study that house of pain one more time,’ to prove how low his princes and princesses of Tides can sink and how high they can soar. True Conroy fans wouldn’t have it any other way.” —Atlanta Journal-Constitution
 
“An emotionally difficult journey that should lend fans of Conroy’s fiction an insightful back story to his richly imagined characters. The moving true story of an unforgiveable father and his unlikely redemption.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review