J.P. Donleavy Books

We went to Ireland (summer 2001) and every month brought back wonderful memories. The calendar photos are fantastic. We also brought a calender in Dingle but this calendar is much better.

I bought this book on sale at the Newport Beach library while visiting my parents and, along with my other book treasures, brought it back to the land where English language books are a precious commodity, Mexico, where I live full-time.

I agree with other reader reviews that Donleavy is an excellent writer when he is describing the world around him, both the inanimate and natural world and the small details of culture. This kept me reading and enjoying.

Also enjoyed the school boy scenes and dialogue.

Then we got to the Nanny episode where Balthzar is 12 and he has this luscious nanny that he has a brief affair with. I'm not a prude and this could have been a very good portion of the book. But the dialogue? It became unbelievably stilted and the descriptive prose of the sex scenes was unexplicit, boring soft-core blather in my opinion.

And yet, I soldiered on. Perhaps the Nanny episode was a momentary lapse. On we roll for awhile with more excellent story progress as Balthazar continues to grow up and descriptions of the people and world around him.

Then he meets woman number 2. The dialogue again turns into total stiltsville. People do NOT talk like this. It was boring and annoying at the same time. Number 2 woman is also a cardboard cutout character given dialogue to match.

I'm female, by the way. Wasn't in the least grossed out by the 'risque' scenes. More irritated and bored. The premises were good in the two I read. But the writer ruined the scenes with his stilted man/woman dialogue. Ludicrously bad.

I deduce from these first two examples that every other love or sex scene in this fat book is going to rivert to this style and from the synopsis, it appears that there are a great many such scenes. I have a choice of skipping the scenes where a woman looms on the horizon and reading the other parts but with all the good books in the world to read, I'm thinking I'm tired of wasting my time on this one.

I hate to do it since I carted it all the way down here using up poundage in my luggage on the airlines to do so, but I'm throwing this baby DOWN. Adios.

This is a gem of a book -- a bildungsroman, a sentimental baedekker for lovers of Dublin and London and Paris, a perfect tearjerker of a love story, layers of plot and subplot and hilarious vignette woven with the febrile third-person/first person staccato narrative style that Donleavy once told the Paris Review was his greatest original contribution to literature. I disagreed, then and now. Balthazar was his greatest contribution. Nearly 40 years after first reading this book I still find him inhabiting certain corners of my imagination.

Donleavy came on the scene with "The Ginger Man" followed by a few practice exercises like "Saddest Summer of Samuel S". Then after Balthazar B he wrote "Fairy Tale of New York" and then started repeating himself until it became apparent that he'd run out of gas. Donleavy isn't the great novelist that I thought he was when I was 17, but he wrote a couple of great novels. This was one of them. I wish I could read it again for the first time

After reading the Ginger Man and the entire Darcy Dancer trilogy, this novel is a sad disappointment of wearisome and sophomoric writing. Particularly unnerving is the slipshod shuttlecocking from third person to first person narration which begins on the first page.-Where was the bleeding editor!?!-There is also the pretentious Joycean reference to the last lines of Ulysses on p. 220:

"No. I'm glad you said yes."
"Yes I said yes."

One wonders whom Donleavy was trying to impress here-those who had read the last page, or last line of Ulysses? Or was he just being careless and lazy? I very much fear the latter.

I'm a great Donleavy fan. But this is not the book of the great writer that you want to read. The Ginger Man or any of the Darcy Dancer trilogy books display so much more lyricism and craft than this book that it almost seems as if it were by another writer entirely.

A splendid book about one Balthazar B, gentleman at large. Donleavy's writing sparkles with wit, humor and charm, and yet he never shies from the experiences that make Balthazar (and all of us) human: the pursuit of sex and the loss of true love. Balthazar is no cardboard hero for whom everything goes right.

Balthazar B. is an aristocrat bewildered at every turn by life. His picaresque journey from Paris to Trinity College Dublin and visitations to country estates and among women of high and dubious social standing is hilarious to behold. The randy foil figure of Beefy may stand as one of the greatest comic figures since Shakespeare's Fat Jack Falstaff. The literary style of Donleavy is itself richly laden with lyricism and poetry and comedy. It is a uniquely pointillistic style in which brush strokes are applied to the canvas with precision and clarity in truncated and non-traditonal but accessible syntax. Like most truly great writers Donleany evokes all of the reader's senses in his work. He also succeeds in arousing sympathy, hilarity, tenderness, grief -- a full range of sensibilities that engage the reader. Each character is roundly drawn and speaks with a unique voice and range of experience. Donleavy's Ginger Man is named among the Random House Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century. He is a supremely talented story teller with an enchanting narrative style that will leave you wanting to read more. Don't miss this novel, The Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman and the Singular Man -- they are all pleasant and richly satisfying literary treasures.

This feels like something haphazardly thrown together over a few months of noodling (including Donlevy's noodled illustrations throughout). Donlevy can be very dark and funny-- see "The Ginger Man" and "The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B"-- but here he's only hit and miss. And the pointed obscenity might have raised eyebrows in the 70s, but seems forced here. If you're new to him, read the good stuff and give this a pass...

I found it funny. If one likes Donleavy the book will not disappoint you. If you don't - probably stay away...

This book was reviewed at the time as "The SOB's Emily Post" and I can't think of a better short description. Absolutely the wittiest and most laugh-out-loud book I've ever read -- and I've read a lot of books. Donleavy careens from one social faux pas and calamity to the next... "On being caught with your best friend's wife"... "On determining that you are on an aeroplane that is about to crash"... and provides true Looking Out for Number 1 self-preservation, the-world-can-bite-me advice. Beautifully crafted, as is all Donleavy's work, sometimes shocking in its juxtaposition of words, and deriving its true impact by couching its directives in the stilted language of the 1930's English Country Folk -- I must advise you: Do NOT read this book in a room or situation that requires silence; otherwise you will try to restrain laughter to such an extent that you'll give yourself a thrombosis. It's the only paperback book that I've guarded and kept for over 20 years.

If you don't already know Balthazar B., Bella Hortense, Beefy, and Elizabeth Fitzdare from other J. P. Donleavy books (whom I was appropriately introduced to while in college many years ago), Leila is probably not the place to start as Donleavy's remarkable and infinitely romantic / emotive writing style and the depth of protagonist Darcy's tragedy is simply too much at one time. However, if you've already read at least one of the others, then Leila is one that you don't want to complete your life without having read. A remarkable story of totally unrequited love, or at least a completely unfilled but potentially deep platonic relationship, set in the context of heartbreaking corruption, physical decay, and financial dissipation amidst (pointless under the circumstances) old world upstairs / downstairs formality and manners. A great! book, I can see re-reading it about every ten years from a different life perspective ...

A really good book, but almost too tragic. It still contains typical Donleavy wit, great characters, and the usual Irish, drunken, sexy fun, but this time the tragic love story brings the book down and makes it a bit too depressing.

Pros: Interesting story with creative plot twists and colorful imagery.
Cons: Syntax was difficult to follow. Sentences are not constructed logically so it is hard to understand what is being conveyed, and also hard to follow. Main character is not relatable to most readers. She is hard to conceive - she is at times portrayed as an elderly prude and at other times as a maniacal sex fiend. She is from obscene wealth and class, and views everyone snobbishly. Yet she is eccentric and crazy. It is difficult to walk in her shoes because so few people have. Her husband leaves her for a younger, sexier woman and she just lets him walk away with a "nice to know you" at the moment the departure is announced. What kind of woman lets her man walk away just like that, without saying horrible words and throwing breakable, sharp objects? The narration alternates randomly between first and third persons. I realize the story is a woman's descent from class to crazy, and maybe the switching between viewpoints deals with this, but it is very confusing and I believe it could have been handled better.

A somewhat comical story of what appears to be a bordilne and biporal woman in the midst of a life crisis. A fun read.

In his recent autobiography, Gardner Botsford tells that the mother of "Punch" Sulzberger of the NY Times experienced the stop in the mortuary rest room followed by the unexpected legacy that forms the climax of Donleavy's novelette.

Those who have read "The Ginger Man" will not be surprised by Donleavy's quirky style. Those who have not will find that book to be both much longer and much more rewarding.

The central twist in this novella---the unforseen consequence of the heroine's trip into the mortuary---is recounted as a true incident by Gardner Botsford in his autobiography, "A Life of Privilege, Mostly," (January, 2003). The woman in Botsford's account is the mother of "Punch" Sulzberger of the NY Times.

The peculiar writing style should not surprise one who has read any other of Donleavy's books but it will surprise one who hasn't. Those who want to savor Donleavy should read "The Ginger Man," a substantially longer work that is enormously more rewarding.

This is the only novel written in the 20th centuary that can compare to the Great Gatsby in its story of the infinite sadness and subtlety of lost love. Here we have a tale so poignant and devastatingly memorable - a tale of a still beautiful woman of only 42 years, divorced, bereft and lonely in her mansion of equisite taste and infinite emptiness - her children ignoring her in their quest for their new lives and her former husband moving on to a younger woman - whose only wish is to sit her ass on a clean surface. who would have thought that her lonely search for meaning through art could have led her to a funeral home and to a surprising and haunting ending to her tale?

Donleavy's female characters are difficult, robust and fiesty and Shultz is in love with all of them except the huge bemoth.
The subtelty and nuance and beauty he notices in the female characters almost make me want to be a man to fully appreciate them myself.
This is a bubbling, zesty book that will leave you breathless, both sexes will enjoy it not just men.

One of the few books that made me laugh out loud. Less touching than 'The Ginger Man' but funnier (if you're a man). Buy it.

Those familiar with the hard charging sound of the trad-punk band The Pogues will find this book has a familiar ring. The Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan used the novel as a basis for his song "A fairytale of New York". While the thread of the story is similar throughout the book and the song, the song changes circumstances and specifics to attain it's rythyms.

"A fairytale of New York" has been voted the best Christmas song in The UK several times.

John Ryan, a publican, was one of the small crowd of literati we can credit (or blame) for the first Bloomsday commemorative walk, which bogged down into pub-crawling prematurely on the 50th anniversary of that June day, 1954. His memoirs won't tell you much about himself, but lots about the milieu from which Donleavy's "The Ginger Man" attained notoriety in decades past.

Paddy Kavanagh comes off as especially waspish here; Flann O'Brien as clever as you'd expect; Brendan Behan's responsible for some hilarious anecdotes--the cats and the steak my favorite--and also irritation and disgust, as we see through Ryan's eyes how playing up to his reputation brought him low. "Pope" O'Mahony, a lesser-known character but equally deserving of fame, exasperates as an erudite, gnomic leg-puller. The only one whose aura seems too dim here--as Ryan admits, at least on paper--is the Ginger Man's inspiration, the enigmatic Gainor Crist.

I expected more about the infamous "catacombs" about which Behan's recent biographer, Michael O'Sullivan, wrote, and about McDaids, but one understands the lack, given that Ryan ran his own pub! His take at the whole drinking and intellectual climate of 1945-55, considered the doldrums of Irish creative life, remains both serious and sardonic, muted and moving, in an inimitable prose open to irony, insight, and inspiration, but never cruelty, one-upsmanship, or false sentimentality.

(Also recommended: fellow Bloomsday trekker Anthony Cronin. Fiction: Life of Riley. Fact? Dead as Doornails for this era.)

Antonioni meets Robbe-Grillet. A very breezy novel, one of the fastest reads in memory, something I devoured in one sitting. The seemingly-shallow life of the protagonist, her empty modern (dare I use the word 'existential') existence which certainly isn't abnormal, and the overall hollow feeling experienced after having read the novel is something that stays with me even a year later.

This was honestly one of the dumbest books I've ever read, and there's not much else I can say about it.

Let us all join with Sebastian Dangerfield to rear up in horror at the abominable way in which society treats its antiheroes! Such a rascal is Dangerfield - a drunken womanizer, a leech and a lech, a brilliant schemer, self-righteous prude, a man in decline, yet rising up, each time, from the bowels of hell through a catharsis of his own wit and imagination. J.P. Donleavy is brilliant. This picaresque novel, written in a modified style of stream of consciousness, is constantly moving, giving the reader little time to ponder a moral or ethical dissection of Dangerfield's antics.

Dangerfield is, after all, a manifestation of human desire in its physical state. He desires, and attains, the finer things in life; yet, each attainment is followed by his own predictable calamity of foibles and follies, through gluttony and his own rapacious wolfishness. Mr. Donleavy is masterful in his choice of every word. Short phrases, separated by periods, create a visual world in full bloom, while pulling the observer (you, insatiable reader) through the emotional rollercoaster being felt by Dangerfield's soul. Such a scoundrel deserves hatred and banishment. In our own observance, we become the enablers of Dangerfield's unconscionable acts, finding ourselves, (surprisingly), unwilling to give him his deserved punishment, forgiving him his transgressions as swiftly as his Mary does. He is, after all, a sensitive soul. Who could argue with that?

J.P. Donleavy's prose dances on the edge with his poetic verve and descriptive style. Each chapter ends with a slice of verse - a summary of each poignant situation in which our roguish suitor finds himself:

"I set sail
On this crucifixion Friday
With the stormy heavens
Crushing the sea
And my heart
Twisted
With dying."

If there isn't a little Ginger Man in you, you're a bore.

I read this book in awe, my jaw hitting the floor with each beautiful sentence that went by. Donleavy was a master wordsmith, who created an amazing character in Sebastian Dangerfied. He's pathetic, he's horrible, he's a waste of space, and yet Donleavy somehow makes him kind of likable, and finds the beauty in this very human story.

This was an almost incredible, maybe even impossible character and story if it wasn't for the fact that I've actually MET people like this -many were my friends... and me!

People going nowhere, people setting up scams to make the next meal, people not having a plot to their lives -even if they do they may as well not have one, and trying not to die with their pants down in the process. And in all this one has got to laugh at the preposterous hot waters they find themselves in; case in point, one Sebastian Dangerfield (the protagonist). Harsh situations that are all the funnier because they are creatures of the protagonist's own creation; not only making his own life but the lives of others miserable. He admits this himself throughout the novel and doesn't care to let one know, for he is the `ginger man'.

Sebastian Dangerfield is not completely callous, however. He is a complex individual; similar to the hero of 'The Catcher in the Rye'; that is if the latter were more... inclined toward whoring and boozing it up (my hero!). There are moments of deep feeling and even shock at the way the world has been let go to the gutter, and of course the culpability is on everyone. There are instances of very human qualities in the heart of this character -at least a longing for these, for despite it all things like love, warmth, friendship, simplicity, true joy, are all things awfully hard to come by... one has to wonder how true these are in our own lives. The author skillfully portrays it all with brilliant sentences that swing effortlessly from powerful poetics to sports-bar speak to choppy machinegun descriptions of inner and outer worlds (my hero!). All this is quickly missed if the reader is unimaginative, `slow', moralistic, and insensitive.

Nevertheless, none of the above should detract from what is the main feature of the novel: it is funny as hell!!! Read it.