The Great Santini

Summary:

This is the story of a marine fighter pilot, Bull Meecham and his family whom he rules with the strictest military discipline. The story focuses in mainly on Bull’s relationship with his eldest son, Ben. Bull is crass, crude and quick-tempered but he loves his family. The family has just had to move with Bull to his newest post in South Carolina. The book chronicles the Meecham family’s struggle to once again assimilate to a new town and a new place and Conroy also very easily transitions into descriptions of the racial and petty political tensions in a small southern town.

My Thoughts:

Conroy is a master of his craft. This book is easy to read, original and incredibly emotional. The relationships and characters in the book seem to come alive. I laughed, I cried, I want to read more by Conroy. Warning, however, some parts of the book are incredibly crude. I thought both Bull and Ben were incredibly interesting and accurate characters and the tensions between them were very thought provoking.

Rating:

♦♦♦◊ [3/4]

Blurb:

“He [Ben] had lost count how many times he had waited beside landing strips, scanning the sky for the approach of his father, his tall, jacketed father, to drop out of the sky, descending into the sight of his waiting family, a family who, over the long years had developed patient eyes, sky-filled eyes, wing-blessed eyes.  As a child Ben had not understood why he had to stare so long and hard into a sky as vast as the sea to cull the mysterious appearance of the man who had fathered him, the man who could do what angels did in the proving grounds of gods, the man who had fought unseen wars five miles above the earth. But now Ben’s eyes had sharpened with practice and age. By instinct now it responded to the slanting wing, the dark , enlarging speck, growing each moment, lowering and coming toward Ben and his family, whose very destinies were fastened to the humming frames of jets.”

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