I think that Conroy's Will Maclean has commonalities with F. Scott Fitzgerald's Nick Carraway. ( )

First edition fine, price clipped.

I first read this book in the '80s when I was in high school and really enjoyed it, as painful as the racism it depicts is. Conroy has a way of sucking me right into a story. There is a good (as I recall) movie adaptation starring David Keith. ( )

I picked this up for a buck because I thought the cover looked ridiculous.

I finished it just now and don't know what to say. I feel too pained to cry, and heavy and sad. It's a beautiful, ugly, powerful book about honor, brotherhood, class, race, Vietnam, and adulthood. Really fantastic. ( )

Pat Conroy is not easy to read because he delves into the baser parts of human nature and it's in the people we know and love (or like, or should love) friend, father, spouse. While the plot typically sails along, it's the interior examination of character and self that bogs me down. This one dragged a bit too in description of Charleston (where I've never been) but it is a partially a love letter to this city and its impact on Will McLean, the main character. Will is starting his senior year at the Carolina Military Institute (a loose cover for Conroy's own experience at the Citadel.) Will is still a private in rank because he has fully bought into the military intellectually, but he is respected enough to be an elected member of the Honor court. He is also a star basketball player which also affords him some respect. It is 1966. Vietnam is in progress and a likely part of Will's future upon graduation. Also he is approached by Colonel Berrineau (the Bear) to keep an eye on an incoming plebe -- the first black student to be admitted to the Institute (Pearce). And he has a meeting with the General who runs the school which isn't quite so friendly. Will's best friend and roommate for the year is an effeminate young man (Tradd St. Croix) whose family is the elite of Charleston. And Will has befriended an unwed 19-year-old pregnant society girl, Annie Kate. Battle lines are drawn. The year starts normally enough with the typical cruelty and hazing of the plebes according to the "system" though Will and his roommates (Tradd, Dante Pignetti (Pig) and Mark Santoro) don't really engage. "To them [the participating upperclassmen], the excesses of the plebe system were salutary and character-building. Torture was simply an effective test of their bloom and vitality. It was the system and we had all agreed to abide by its laws.... I saw that the plebe system was destroying the ability or the desire of the freshmen to use the 'I'....The person who could survive the plebe year and still use the word 'I' was the most seasoned and indefatigable breed of survivor.....I wanted to be that man in my class."(158) That sums up Will's attitude toward his own experience and also his compassion toward the incoming freshmen. When a plebe (Poteete) commits suicide early in the semester, Will starts to suspect something darker is at work -- he himself had survived a Taming as a freshman - a student-led show of authority and dominance that was psychologically degrading and physically brutal after he had written a derogatory, satirical newspaper article about upperclassmen -- but Poteete's experience seems to go beyond even that extreme. Will starts to wonder about the existence of The 10 - a super secret society of Institute lore that runs out undesirables. The book becomes part detective work and part morality play as Will literally endangers his own life and those of his roommates as he tries to uncover the truth and save Pearce who is next on the 10's list. Meanwhile, Will has fallen in love with Annie Kate and spends much of his free time with her at her beach home hideaway. She cannot be seen in society because her mother is trying to hide the shame. Secrets abound. Think of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men: ("You can't handle the truth!") The last 3rd of the book is really where all the action is as all these events coalesce and threaten Will (and friends) with physical danger and the threat of not graduating. The way they stick together is touching and comes to some good in the end, though there is a monumental loss. Will's soul-searching and coming-of-age realizations are really at the heart of this book. He is remarkably strong (morally) and acts with true honor for the greater good when his digging around reveals a sinister reality and far-reaching betrayal that shakes the foundation of all he thought he knew. And yet he survives intact, if scarred to proclaim "I wear the ring." ( )