Pat Conroy has had a lifetime love affair with the English language, and his wonderfully rich prose goes down like a bowl of gumbo, thick, delicious, lovingly prepared. I lost myself in the many varied human stories told in their varied human voices in Beach Music, his 1995 tribute to his own family.
But I also found myself, at times, reminded of Frederick’s comment to Mozart when asked about his music. “Too many notes,” he replied. Mozart is shocked…how can there be too many notes in the music he wrote? It is perfect. The King goes on to explain that humans can only listen to so many notes at a time and Mozart had gone over that limit in his opera. It was still good but just a little hard to listen to. Conroy does that to me as well. Simply too many details, maybe one too many stories, and, in the case of this book, just a tad too much tragedy. From the Holocaust to leukemia to madness, this relatively small group of people seems to share a lot of tragedy and grief. Oh, and I forgot about the shooting in the Rome airport. which came as something of a shock despite pretty heavy foreshadowing that something bad was going to happen. Too many notes.
Yet, like the King, I liked the book for its detail of setting and Conroy is the best food writer I know. I always want to head into the kitchen and do something with shrimp and pasta when I finish one of his books. After some pretty heavy duty reading this summer, I enjoyed the pleasure of sinking into a long, rambling book and if I missed a few notes here and there, I think it’s OK.
