Ginny Good: A Mostly True Story

If you are incapable of appreciating original thought and a playful, truly original writing style, then by all means, go hither to the library and find some NY Times bestselling author to appease your limitations. Because Ginny Good is a romp of a read, with the kind of natural comedic timing that makes you feel like you're listening to a story being told by a friend, maybe while sitting in your backyard together watching fireflies buzzing around and drinking a beer. Though the story is set mainly in the 60s and 70s, and certainly captures some of the cultural flavor of the times, it is a life story and a love story. Ginny Good is a flawed person, as are all the characters in the book, and the author does a rare thing with his characters here - he doesn't push you to judge them, he presents them with their charm, their quirks and their failings, and lets you react as you choose ~ love them, hate them, pity them, loathe them, do what you will with them, but do it on your own terms. That kind of original authorship is priceless. Authors so often force you into siding with characters, and I often end up tossing the book within 50 or so pages because of that kind of weak, manipulative writing. I had the extraordinary experience of falling over this book in a bookstore in Ashland, Oregon, the hometown of the author. But for the title of the book I never would have known the pleasure of reading this story. (As my name is 'Ginny' also, how could I resist the title!) Ashland is a lovely town where many of the hippies of the Beat Generation ended up, along with their Birkinstocks. In fact, just as an aside, there is a shoe repair shop in Ashland that advertises its specialty in "Birkinstock Repairs." Hilarious! Read this book with an open mind and heart and you will enjoy it as I have, laughing and crying and wincing, remembering another era long lost, remembering youth and lost loves with that stinging pain/pleasure of nostalgia. A delightful, unique book, written by an author we can hope will get off his lazy ass and produce some more joyful romps of a read in the near future for his readers to enjoy!

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.

If you were in or around San Francisco in the sixties and seventies - or if wish you had been - this is the book to read. Jones' easy, meandering style takes us through his on-again, off-again relationship with "the first hippie" - Ginny Good - and all the love triangles, rectangles, and arcs that relationships create. It's a great story, and set beautifully against a background of the music and morality of that era. Gerard Jones' prose is engaging and makes Ginny a captivating read all the way through. There's some heartbreak, but mostly a lot of wonderful humanity in "Ginny Good." It's a book you'll be very glad you read.