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Overview
Beach Music is about Jack McCall, an American living in Rome with his young daughter, trying to find peace after the recent trauma of his wife's suicide. But his solitude is disturbed by the appearance of his sister-in-law, who begs him to return home, and of two school friends asking for his help in tracking down another classmate who went underground as a Vietnam protester and never resurfaced. These requests launch Jack on a journey that encompasses the past and the present in both Europe and the American South, and that leads him to shocking - and ultimately liberating - truths.Synopsis
The author of The Prince of Tides deliveres a new novel of sweeping, lyrical intensity. Jack McCall, living in Rome with his daughter in hopes of finding peace after the suicide of his wife, is surprised by a visit from his sister-in-law. She draws him into a search for the one haunting secret in his family's past that can heal his anguished heart.
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
Mr. Conroy is verbosely eloquent, imaginatively violent and a superior yarn spinner, sometimes to a fault....What betrays Mr. Conroy too often are his flights of lyrical prose. True, now and then he catches the lightning instead of the lightning bug....Most damaging of all, "Beach Music" builds to a disappointing climax that is quite literally staged and rings as false as Eugene O'Neill at his most wooden....When all is said and overdone in "Beach Music," Mr. Conroy leaves you begging for less. -- New York Times