Rating: 
Summary: Please don't believe the blurbs
Review: (Two-and-half-stars) There are moments in Donleavy's "Ginger Man" where his prose sings. The last chapter is absolutely beautiful. Too bad it is not representative of the rest of the book. I have no quibbles with the morality (or immorality) of Sebastian Dangerfield; great literature shouldn't be judged according to its moral content, anyways, in my opinion. My problem is with what I perceive as a lack of any point or purpose in the narrative. Donleavy does a fine job of parroting James Joyce's style, but the freshness, ingenuity, and underlying human compassion that makes "Ulysses" such a wonderful novel are severely lacking here. Dangerfield is pathetic, just pathetic. I felt no compassion for him. Donleavy does not attempt to draw his character as anything more than a lazy, womanizing drunk. The humor inherent in his situation and character is fully mined in the first few chapter. That leaves 250+ pages of rambling stream-of-conscious prose which adds little or nothing to the character or the story. So the book is well-written. Fine. But in the words of the Burger King lady, "Where's the beef?"
Rating: 
Summary: Not exactly a wildly funny comic extravaganza
Review: A great big stream of consciousness slice of life book about the boozing, lazy, nasty, cruel, selfish Sebastian Dangerfield, and American in Dublin who is supposed to be studying law at Trinity but instead drinks all day, chases women and exchanges abuse with his wife. All the negative reviews here center of Sebastian's moral character. To be sure, Sebastian is an unpleasant character, but that doesn't bother me. I was simply bored by the events of the novel. I didn't find it, as all the blurbs promised, an exuberant, witty, wildly comic escapade. Donleavy's writing style is good and his langauge is rich (and the book contains amazingly graphic sex scenes for its time), but I wasn't interested in what was happening to this drunken fellow. And, as with another Irish book with a scoundrel hero, Joyce Cary's The Horse's Mouth, the same nothings seemed to happen again and again: Sebastain avoids creditors. Sebastian beds women. Sebastian gets drunk and waxes outrageous and lyrical. Okay, but must there be so much of it?
Rating: 
Summary: 'Sir. I say. There are ladies present in the carriage'
Review: A welcomed departure from everyday life. You will laugh very hard at the great misadventures between these pages.
Rating: 
Summary: Of Celts and kangaroos
Review: Anybody who likes his protagonists to be paragons of virtue will be sorely disappointed with this book, because Sebastian Dangerfield is the most archetypal of antiheroes. He is so depraved, so immoral, so belligerent, and has so little regard his family, for humanity, and for himself, that this novel can only be understood within the realm of the comically absurd. Dangerfield is an Irish American living in Dublin with his long-suffering wife and baby daughter, both of whom he physically assaults when he is irked. He is supposed to be studying law at Trinity College, but accomplishes very little of it what with all his drinking, loafing, extramarital affairs, and general womanizing. He hangs around with several loser friends, one of whom is another American transplant named O'Keefe who is so unlucky with women that he retreats to Paris to dabble in homosexuality and pederasty, and then returns to Ireland to try to lie his way into a job as a chef. Much of the narration is an erratic mix of sentence fragments and complete sentences that alternate freely between first and third person and present and past tense, echoing Dangerfield's cluttered, harried, and often drunken thoughts. So why read a book about such a moron as Dangerfield? Because he has a unique perspective on his life and his surroundings, there is depth to his thoughts, there is spice in his speech; his commentary on Ireland, its people, and Irish-English antipathy ("Jesus was a mick and Judas was a lime") is interesting if not enlightening. What makes this novel succeed as an unlikely comic work is that Donleavy writes with an ironic levity that suggests Dangerfield is more to be pitied than censured, even during his cruelest moments. The world would be a kinder, gentler place without its Sebastian Dangerfields, but it would also be more boring. And somebody has to wear the kangaroo costume.
Rating:
Summary: The Ginger Man
Review: Donleavy breaks every rule of writing and comes up with masterpieces; been doing it for fifty years. In the "Ginger Man," one of his best, he dissects the mind and spirit of a rogue, dragging the reader in and out of Irish saloons, through troubled affairs,into hot water and nasty entanglements, and, despite the decadence of Dangerfield, you enjoy the scamp's company.
It's the best trip you'll ever take to Ireland.
Rating:
Summary: Did I Miss Something?
Review: Even if I don't particularly like a critically acclaimed novel, I can usually understand the reason for the acclaim. Not so with "The Ginger Man." I honestly don't understand why this book is so praised by the literary establishment. It doesn't break any new ground stylistically (in fact, I think J.P. Donleavy's writing is pretty anonymous) or thematically. The description on the book's back cover would have you believe this is a rollicking farce about a lovable cad---don't you believe it. This book isn't funny. The "lovable cad" is actually a jerk and by the time he'd gotten drunk and abusive for the thousandth time, I had made up my mind that the literary establishment that loves "The Ginger Man" must have all been drunk themselves when they decided this book is a must read. It's not difficult, but neither is it in the least bit interesting.
Rating:
Summary: An Unforgettable Classic
Review: I'm into THE GINGER MAN right now, and enjoying it tremendously. I wonder if John Updike read this book before he wrote RABBIT, RUN. Rabbit and Sebastian have similar qualities; they are both scoundrels to love. Also, I'm wondering if the title is derived from the rhyme: run, run as fast as you can/you can't catch me/I'm the ginger [bread] man!
Rating:
Summary: Funnier than Catch-22 or Bombardiers, and with more drama
Review: Quite simply, one of the five funniest books of all time, I rate this alongside Confederacy of Dunces, Catch-22, Bombardiers, and Vonnegut's best work. It tells the story of an usually drunken American, Sebastian Dangerfield, studying at Trinity College, Dublin, and his trials and tribulations of him, his wife and friends, colleagues, and fellow drinkers. Written in 1965 and hailed as "A triumph of comic writing..." by The New Yorker it is crying-out-loud funny. The scene where Sebastian tries to buy condoms in 1960s Ireland is alone worth the price of the book. Friends raved about this for years, and I'm still kicking myself for waiting this long to read it. The best story I've ever seen about contemporary man trying to find pleasure in life without working in any sense of the word. I am more apt to give comedies a one, but this is definitely a ten
Rating:
Summary: Gripping characters in a Kerouac style ride
Review: Sebastian Dangerfield and his cronies - impossible to like, but perhaps just a little too easy to identify - struggle to make their way in a world where blue blood is not the end all. As the book meanders on, the reader painfully starts rooting for the despicable protagonists. Is it because of identification? Or maybe the recollection that the people they are using are actually using them in return? Or maybe it just is not so black and white. The book has been hailed as a modern classic. I'm not sure it did that much for me. There are lessons in responsibility, changing times and personal weakness that are enduring. Perhaps it is the style of the book, written in a Kerouac style - an Irish "On the Road". It's a worthy read, in an interesting (even delightful) style, but I struggle to find the greatness to which it's been ascribed. Maybe when I understand the greatness of Sir Vidia, I'll understand this as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Not my cup of tea
Review: The Ginger Man is funny--in fact hilaious at times, it is well written, and it moves relatively quickly. Those are all excellent qualities that I love in a book, but sadly this story also just never really moves. The characters aren't particularly engaging, even Sebastian Dangerfield who is the focus of all the action in the story. He is certainly infuriating as a lazy, abusive, self centered, morally corrupt person, which is not a problem for me since some of the best chracters in fiction share these qualities, but I don't care about his flaws or the people who he manipulates and disregards throughout the book. The book is not particularly memorable and never made me stop and think or particularly care what it was saying, so as I see it the book fails in the end. Many critics and well respected authors love this book, who I assume appreciate its unique (for the 1950's at least) free-flowing style and graphic depictions of various types of debauchery, but as a casual reader it was no better than average.
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