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65 of 88 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Promise not kept, March 6, 2005
This review is from: Ginny Good (Paperback)
This is one of those books that looks as though it's going to be good, but after a few pages, the novelty of the writing wears thin. I couldn't continue. If the writing had been better, perhaps I would have been interested in the unfolding events, but the choppy and mannered style focused me on the writing itself. Like acting, writing is good when it is not noticed as trying too hard.
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23 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE PREVIOUS 20 REVIEWS, February 4, 2006
This review is from: Ginny Good (Paperback)
I often wondered why the IMDB has a minimum number of words that must be written before they accept a review. Silly me. Now I know. I read "Ginny Good" recently, partially because of the subject matter and also due to the SERIOUS reviews posted here. Imagine my surprise tonight when I read 20 (or more) postings in the last week alone, all in a row, all very short, all insulting the book --several in racist dialogue -- and all written by people who HAVE NEVER reviewed any prior books for Amazon.It is fairly easy to conclude that most or all of them are fakes, but they have succeeded in reducing the book to only "3" stars. Nasty and deliberate work on somebody's part.
Here's what I thought -- and I actually read the book, folks.
If you're over 40 and/or have an interest in what San Francisco was like in the early days of the hippie and anti-war movement, this is a great story. And unlike James Frey's rehab fiction, it sings with real people and real events. It is also beautifully written.
Ginnny Good was a sad creature, probably bi-polar, and an alcoholic. The sixties were full of people like her.In case some readers don't understand, excessive alcohol, excessive drugs and excessive sex were common back then. There was no AIDS. There was not a Rehab hospital in every town and because there wasn't,there was a high tolerance for what we now might call dysfunctional behavior. Nobody thought of it as dysfunctional then. It was "doing your own thing." People did not judge other people. There were no prescriptions like Prozac or Elavil or gyms for exercise and an emphasis on health -- although that is when a lot of the health food (vegan) movement began. Women were still second class citizens for the most part and black people had just gotten the right to vote in a dozen or so states. Students smoked dope and read Kierkegard and took illegal drugs because they were there. You cannot compare the sixties to today's standards anymore than you might compare the Civil War era to the 1920's. It was what it was -- and Gerard Jones tells it that way.
His prose are carefully crafted and the narrative is utterly compelling. The story of Ginny and Elliot and Gerard is heartbreaking at times and will stay with me for a long time, but it is very real -- and very good.
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16 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ginny Very Good, February 20, 2006
This review is from: Ginny Good (Paperback)
If you order this book hoping for a trippy-hippie fairy tale, you are going to be disappointed. More than being about the 60s, Ginny Good seems to happen in spite of the 60s: "It was groovy. It was far out. It was over."
The characterization is the real meat of the story. At times brutally funny, at other times emotionally devastating, this memoir-esque novel follows the thread of three friends as they weave in and out of one another's lives. Each of them seems to be wondering, "How can I settle into a normal life after this?" They always want too much from one another, and the fallout of their entanglements is often catastrophic.
Jones strikes the tone of someone whose experience was so authentic that he does not need to sermonize or idealize it. The 60s happened like every other decade, and people happened along with it. His narration is excellent, and his direct, punchy sentences effortlessly carry the load of every emotion from bleak absurdity to childlike wonder. For anyone who has ever loved and lost or simply wondered, "How do I go on after this?" Gerard Jones shows us that time doesn't heal wounds so much as language does.
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