The novel works because it possesses the inexpressible magic where the art of pure storytelling rises above its ancient use and succeeds in explaining to a whole nation how it came to be this way.  There has never been a reader or a writer who could figure out why this happens to only a very few books.  It involves all the eerie mysteries of enchantment itself, the untouchable wizardry that occurs when a story, in all its fragile elegance, speaks to the times in a clear, original voice and answers some strange hungers and demands of the Zeitgeist.

                                                     Pat Conroy in My Reading Life