Ginny Good

Rating:
Summary: Two times a lady.
Review: Crap.

I just wrote the greatest review of all time. Really. It was the best. Awesome. Utterly amazing. Then when I pushed submit I got an error on the Amazon.com page, and when I pushed back, it was gone.

It took a three week trip to Europe for me to decide I was willing to do this again. In a sense, take this as a testament to how good this book was. Worth the effort.

At first I didn't like "Ginny Good." I didn't like the book as a whole and the character annoyed me. I couldn't believe they published this P.O.S. And after thinking Gerard Jones was a bi-polar psychopath who couldn't keep a story straight and kept having to use "Oh crap, hold on..." I finally realized it was genius.

I was born in the 80's, forget the 60's and 70's. But you know? This book gave me a taste. A real feel good taste of the crap that went on back in the day. I liked it. The detail in this book is so fluid you hardly notice you're picking up every color and shape and size and forming images so vivid in your mind you start to wonder if *you* are on an acid trip. The characters, the author's friends and family, are intriguing. You wonder what they'd be doing now together if all were still breathing. During the book, you wonder what they're doing when they aren't being talked about. They're not wasted pages like most supporting cast members--they're meaningful.

The story ends how all stories end: Happy. Sad. Horrifying. Unanswered. Perfect.

And that's how this review will end.

Rating:
Summary: Real Real Truth
Review: Gerard Jones has finally told the truth about life in the early sixties. After years of novels and memoirs that made it all seem like a fantastic ride that no person should have missed, Ginny Good puts things into better perspective. Never boring, never long winded, Mr. Jones has given us a picture of the real life roller coaster of the 1960's, the Vietnam war era and the effect of drug culture on the people who often get trapped inside it. Ginny Good is a bittersweet love story set in the times where free love often won versus true love. Applause for the real truth being told, after decades of fairy tales and wanna be rememberances. Gerard Jones deserves more attention in a world too quick to make fiction a reality. His voice is stunningly honest and wise - a relief in these times when one can barely believe the daily news on television.

Rating:
Summary: A mostly true example of pure fiction
Review: Gerard Jones has written a book, a mostly true book. The story of the hippie culture is appealing to some and a turn off for others. But, it is the style that keeps the reader linked to Ginny Good. The story is basically about the experiences that life pulls us through. It is about reflection, humor, confusion, and strife. But, mostly, Ginny Good is about the human condition and the power of the human spirit that is at its best when displayed through humor. This is Gerard Jones first book, but I am expecting others to follow quickly. This author has much promise and expect to keep hearing his words-and if you listen, you will be pleasantly surprised.

Rating:
Summary: Back to the Sixties
Review: Gerard Jones shows that you can remember the Sixties even if you were there. This is a story that is astonishingly true in its lush recreation of places, flavors, sounds, and people. Going beyond the easy takes of flower power and free love, Ginny Good captures the very soul of an era. It's characters, lovingly recreated, some long dead, achieve a kind of immortality in their remembrance. In the process, the story is by turns hilarious, sad, provocative, revealing. This is an honest, brave book.

Rating:
Summary: At last - a real writer gets published
Review: Gerard Jones' debut Ginny Good is way more than good - it's great. No, let's not be bashful. It's awesome! Why?

Because its voice really is unique in literature today. With so much formula copy-cat stuff about it's great to read a book that actually means something. To the author, and to me. It's heart-felt, real, and incredibly funny.

If I could give ten freaking stars on amazon I would have no hesitation! Hell, why stop there? Why not twenty! Well done Mr Jones. I hope Ginny Good becomes an international bestseller. Gritty, no bull writing deserves to be read by as wide a readership as possible. Thank you.

(...)

Rating:
Summary: If you stole my car and left my book inside I thank you!
Review: I procrastinated this year in buying my son's Halloween costume. He talked me into going to Party City and fighting the crowd for the best looking tough guy outfit- guns or knives had to be part of the whole look. I was dreading it- I wanted to hand him twenty bucks and send him inside the store to fend for himself. Why not? I could sit outside in my big warm honey of a car and read Ginny Good in the parking spot in front of the store. (I was at a really good part too- chapter seven I think.)Well, I pride myself on being a great mom, so I left my book on the seat and walked into the madness with my Zach. It took him seventy three minutes to find something I could talk him into. (A pirate with a huge hat, a fake parrot on his shoulder and lots of knives hanging from a belt- don't give him too much candy if he comes to your house- I will be the one to suffer).

Anyway, it was dark when we left the store. My car was gone. Thugs had taken it. I don't know who they were, but I walked that parking lot searching for my book. I mean, my car. OK, dangit, I wanted my damn book. I have insurance, but I wanted my book! Well, I guess I had just parked it where I didn't think I had, or whoever took it returned it unharmed, and left Ginny Good right on my seat. What a relief. I adore this book. I hope Gerard Jones writes more because I will buy whatever he writes.

Rating:
Summary: Incisive mind at work
Review: I read the reviews. All of them -- after I read the book. What I found in Ginny Good and neglected/missed in the reviews, or wrongly read as "a wandering mind, drifting narrative, acid trip, blah blah" is the work of an incisive mind. The literature alluded to, for example, from Abelard to Willow is exacting. This is a great mind at work. Don't be fooled by this author. He is precisely clever. His cleverness can be missed easily as the word by word cadense is rhythmical, a delightful read.

Rating:
Summary: Heartbreaking and true...
Review: I stumbled across Ginny Good while ransacking the author's web site about the publishing business. It piqued my curiousity; the excerpt he had up there was good; so I thought, what the heck, and got myself a copy. The first two or three pages, I tolerated. The next ten, I entertained. The following 340 pages I read with such hypnotic absorption that at one point, when my husband came home and I had to set it down to run over and pick up some Chinese take-out, I was pretty determinedly pissed off about it. I *had* to find out what the heck was going to happen with Melanie.

The book itself? It's a memoir, and thus lacks the "plot agenda" of a work of fiction, which turns out to be wonderful. "Ginny Good" is utterly unpredictable, messy, heartbreaking, candid, sexy, angry... breathtakingly real. The characters are vividly alive. The emotions, as Gerard Jones expresses them, are painfully, piercingly on target. The first acid trip scene is a freakin' *riot*. Also, from a cultural point of view, it's genuinely interesting. The way the events of the culture and the world are woven into the story is terrific; it reminded me of "Couples" by John Updike in that way. It runs slow at times, and at times you think Gerard Jones is a self-centered jerk... and as a woman reading it, I wondered if the "mostly true" caveat in the subhead refers to the sexual appetites of every woman in the daggone book. But they're minor points. The book is full of gorgeous, insightful little gems of imagery that I wanted to color with a highlighter. And the ending just *soars*... sublimely perfect. I can see that my copy is going to get all cruddy with thumbprints and soda can circles from sitting on my night table.

I've got three kids, and it's been a long time since I had the time, energy, or room within me to let a book suck me in the way this one did. When I got my copy of "Lolita," years ago, the cover quote was, "The only convincing love story of our century." That was the 20th century, however, and as far as that quote goes, the torch ought to be passed to "Ginny Good."

Rating:
Summary: A Work of Art
Review: It's been a long time since I picked up a book like this, one that I could not put down until it was finished and then had to read it again. Words flow, the prose so well-crafted that at times I put aside the story and just enjoyed the way the words were strung together. The tale is funny, sad and oftentimes incredible, but Ginny Good is definitely worth owning.

Rating:
Summary: Ginny is definitely GOOD!
Review: Reviewed by Jennifer Leblanc for Small Spiral Notebook

Ginny Good is a page-turning memoir in which Gerard Jones paints a fascinating, sad story of San Francisco in the 60's.

Jones has written an ode to a real-life girl named Ginny Good, claiming he knows of proof that she was the first hippie. "There's a picture of her in the school paper at San Francisco State," Jones claims, and the first use of the word "hippie was in the caption to that picture." On New Years Eve in 1962 Jones and his friend Eliot Felton, a disturbed green beret, meet Good at a jazz club, not knowing the effect that chance meeting will have on their future, individually and together. Good is a child of divorce, a "goddamn icon," a drunk, a rape victim and someone desperate for love in the turbulent 60's, which, as Jones explains, was not a good time for anyone, never mind someone with Ginny's troubles. But Jones and Felton can't help me drawn to, loving and taking care of Ginny Good for well over a decade. Her presence disturbs their relationships, their minds, their lives but Jones writes of her so affectionately that he obviously considers her worth every last trouble.

The characters go back and forth between being thoroughly unlikable in obnoxious, hippie ways or too sad and abused by life to arouse anything but pity. These weren't just a bunch of cartoon-ish hippies with flowers in their hair. These were people with pain and love and dreams who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The 60's were mainly about avoiding responsibility- everyone openly living rent free, raising even more dysfunctional children, and hurting those around them. But Jones's description of the time, down to the smallest details, is fresh and different from any other 60's portrait out there. He notes,

...the whole hippie thing was over by 1966... It had nothing to do with the war or civil rights or free speech. All that riding around in flower power busses was the commercialization of the experience... all that was nothing but advertising by people who'd already taken acid to get other people to take acid, and by then the advertising was getting mistaken for what really went on. A few minds got blown on acid. That's it.

And speaking of acid, the sublime, mystical, breathtaking scene with Ginny in the woods on acid is worth buying this book alone. Although this is Jones's debut novel, je has a real flair for prose. Lines such as "chalk dust hovered in shafts of early morning sunlight" fill the tale with vivid images. For the writing, for the 60's, for Jones, and above all for Ginny, this book deserves to be read.