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Jonathan's Reviews > The Ginger Man
The Ginger Man
by
by
Beautiful.
For all those 1 and 2 star reviewers on here who "hated" the book for its "misogyny" and the "unpleasantness" of Sebastian, I quote the following:
"He sat there elbows on his thighs hands hanging from his wrists.
Dreaming out this sunset. Tacked up on a cross and looking down. A cradle of passive, mystifying sorrow. Flooded in tears. Never be too wise to cry. Or not take these things. Take them. Keep them safely. Out of them comes love.
Miss Frost stepped from the door shyly. Her head a little bent and red spreading under the flesh of her temples. There was a small spot middle way up her nose. Her lashes dark and flickering, the wandering skin around her eyes. Some lines of her hair and her age of thirty four. The vulnerable steep bottom of her skull. Never to turn around and look at our backs, or as we are walking away. But her feet stepping with red toes. The part of her that was her falling arches, the sway bent ankles which put a tender part in her eyes. For women are lonely people, lonelier with women and with men, enclosed by sunless children and the little vanishing things that go away during the years of waiting. And hearts. And how was love so round.
If
There's a bell
In Dingle
And you want to say
How sorry you are
I'm gone
Ring it
And make it go
Ding dong. "
I made the mistake, you see, of reading some of those reviews out of curiosity. Apparently the following sentences on page 29 were sufficient to turn many against the book:
"“He drove his fist into Marion’s face. She fell backward against the cupboard. Dishes crashing to the floor. In tattered underwear he stood at the nursery door. He kicked his foot through and tore off the lock to open it. Took the child’s pillow from under its head and pressed it hard on the screaming mouth.
“I’ll kill it, God damn it, I’ll kill it, if it doesn’t shut up.�
I am at a loss to see why. Unless one believes that the fact that an author includes such a scene in a novel means that he must condone it. Or that such events should be read in isolation from what comes before and after. Or that novels should not have unpleasantness in them. I dont know.
Anyway. If my first quote appealed, and my second did not have you crying "won't somebody think of the children!?!", then you should check this dirty old bugger out.
For all those 1 and 2 star reviewers on here who "hated" the book for its "misogyny" and the "unpleasantness" of Sebastian, I quote the following:
"He sat there elbows on his thighs hands hanging from his wrists.
Dreaming out this sunset. Tacked up on a cross and looking down. A cradle of passive, mystifying sorrow. Flooded in tears. Never be too wise to cry. Or not take these things. Take them. Keep them safely. Out of them comes love.
Miss Frost stepped from the door shyly. Her head a little bent and red spreading under the flesh of her temples. There was a small spot middle way up her nose. Her lashes dark and flickering, the wandering skin around her eyes. Some lines of her hair and her age of thirty four. The vulnerable steep bottom of her skull. Never to turn around and look at our backs, or as we are walking away. But her feet stepping with red toes. The part of her that was her falling arches, the sway bent ankles which put a tender part in her eyes. For women are lonely people, lonelier with women and with men, enclosed by sunless children and the little vanishing things that go away during the years of waiting. And hearts. And how was love so round.
If
There's a bell
In Dingle
And you want to say
How sorry you are
I'm gone
Ring it
And make it go
Ding dong. "
I made the mistake, you see, of reading some of those reviews out of curiosity. Apparently the following sentences on page 29 were sufficient to turn many against the book:
"“He drove his fist into Marion’s face. She fell backward against the cupboard. Dishes crashing to the floor. In tattered underwear he stood at the nursery door. He kicked his foot through and tore off the lock to open it. Took the child’s pillow from under its head and pressed it hard on the screaming mouth.
“I’ll kill it, God damn it, I’ll kill it, if it doesn’t shut up.�
I am at a loss to see why. Unless one believes that the fact that an author includes such a scene in a novel means that he must condone it. Or that such events should be read in isolation from what comes before and after. Or that novels should not have unpleasantness in them. I dont know.
Anyway. If my first quote appealed, and my second did not have you crying "won't somebody think of the children!?!", then you should check this dirty old bugger out.
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The Ginger Man.
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Reading Progress
August 21, 2016
–
Started Reading
August 21, 2016
– Shelved
August 21, 2016
–
0.29%
"finally getting round to this one...a quick skim through all those 1 and 2 star reviews on here suggests this would be a prime candidate for one of Nathan's patented clipingviews."
page
1
August 21, 2016
–
9.8%
"Women from Foxrock with less thick ankles and trim buttocks shod closely and cleanly with the badge of prosperity, strutting because they owned the world and on their way to coffee and an exhibition of paintings."
page
34
August 22, 2016
–
34.58%
"It amazes me that someone could read this and think the author intended us not to find fault with Seb's behaviour. Or that describing violence and abuse is the same as condoning it."
page
120
August 22, 2016
–
36.02%
"She was a girl gone away. And I put my finger in her sad, tight, little hole, feeling lost and crying and wandering in rain and trees, a world too big, and lost and her dark head was so dark and her eyes shut."
page
125
August 23, 2016
–
Finished Reading
Comments Showing 1-8 of 8 (8 new)
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message 1:
by
Rod
(new)
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rated it 5 stars
Aug 23, 2016 11:40AM
I can't get on with Donleavy's writing, but it's more the sentence fragments than anything ideological.
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Rod wrote: "I can't get on with Donleavy's writing, but it's more the sentence fragments than anything ideological."Which is entirely reasonable - enjoyment of a writer's style, like any matter of taste, is subjective (like, for example, how, no matter how hard I try, I just cannot make it through more than a few paragraphs of anything by David Foster Wallace)
The line between depicting something and endorsing it has been almost entirely erased. Good for you for standing up for it.
A cradle of passive, mystifying sorrow - that's the book.
I remember reading The Ginger Man long ago, and feeling excited to have found another strange and powerful European writer--and then becoming very disappointed, when his next couple of books came out. I'd forgotten about him--I'll have to take another look at his later novels and see what I think now.And readers often personalize a writer's tales. The 20ish daughter of a good friend read one of mine and, angrily, told me, "Only a rapist could have written that!" Her parents remained friends but she wouldn't talk to me for years. I suppose this suggests we should only write pleasant novels about pleasant things. Forget wars, disasters, discrimination, oppression, rape.
It's just not well written or interesting. There are thousands of great books. This character is not interesting or likable.
Same people who don't like Beavis and Butthead - yeah, it's a dated reference, but they never heard of a cautionary tale? I remember not liking Bright Lights Big City because I thought its message (my takeaway at the time) ("you can't party all night and work all day, it doesn't work well even in the short term) was stupidly obvious.
Loved the quotes you included, Jonathan. He wrote the most exquisitely unusual and gorgeous sentences.
