Ronson has a fantastic dry wit and tiptoe-through-the-tulips style that reminded me of Roald Dahl ... The attitude of gentle, dogged bemusement in The Castle seems preferable to many of the more strident positions struck by his…subjects.
Contains a series of riveting portraits of very different men who, he believes, are unravelling because of the same condition: acute purposelessness caused by a rapidly changing society ... Mark is the figure holding the book’s various narratives together, and he is in some ways the most striking of the lot owing to the dazzle of his money. I found him, though, the least compelling of the men Ronson investigates ... It will be up to the reader to decide whether the various narratives in The Castle coalesce convincingly to support the notion that we live in a 'a world of unravelling men'. For me, they don’t, simply because each case is so idiosyncratic. But it doesn’t matter: this is an unmissable piece of work.
This is his first book in 11 years and it’s as good a read as any of his previous big hits. A Jon Ronson book is never clear-cut, there are no neat finishes or satisfying conclusions. The Castle is no different. But like all of his writing, this book will open new insights for you, and it will linger long after you’ve closed the final chapter ... A great attempt to unpick modern masculinity and to see what is prompting a real mental health crisis in men. Only when we understand it will we be able to address it.
It is absolutely terrifying — and winningly described by Ronson with his wry style and magpie eye for the outrageous detail. The Castle is a supremely entertaining portrait of a terrible future, and we’re all going there together.
Ronson’s investigation into the castle never quite reaches a satisfying climax, nor does his exploration of 'a broken kind of masculinity'. If the castle is a metaphor for manhood, Ronson breaches the walls but doesn’t quite make it to the banqueting hall. Perhaps it is too big a problem for one book. But Ronson is too good a journalist, and the topic is too interesting, for this to be a wasted adventure.
Gonzo sleuthing is only one ingredient of The Castle: the subtitle, Adventures in a World of Unravelling Men, hints at its ultimately piecemeal nature, as Ronson zigzags around case studies designed to illustrate the plight of the post-industrial male ... Ronson is persuasive on the problems of casting masculinity as original sin ... Ronson’s reflexive parallels don’t always help us understand his slippery subjects.
Unsparing ... Fans of Ronson’s previous work will recognize his candidly brusque style in both sentence construction and reporting style. The Castle is compellingly nuanced in its social analysis as Ronson arrives at outcomes that are both concerning and empathetic.
...by turns funny and frightening, dark and disarming. It’s a cautionary tale of our times that deserves to be on the shelf of any reader who seeks to make sense of the perplexing, and sometimes toxic, manosphere.
Ronson does his best to pull this off by arguing that, just as the era of Hefner’s lifestyle is gone, so are many of the elements that gave men purpose, especially work and the prizing of old-school male virtues. Yet the more we discover about Mark, the more he seems far too sui generis – or, if you prefer, bonkers – to be typical of anything. At times, indeed, Mark’s story rather gets in the way of the more interesting stuff about the 'unravelling men' of the subtitle ... For all the wildness of these stories, and how well Ronson tells them, the size of his sample is clearly tiny. He does, however, make a strong case that our loss of faith in Western institutions has had badly damaging effects, such as a commitment to individualism that can too easily become narcissistic ... Ronson sees an overswinging pendulum at work in the shamelessness with which social-media warriors now go about their business. While the public shamings he described last time out were clearly horrifying, he accepts that sometimes shame is a healthy force. Such boring old centrism may be out of favour, but it’s difficult to imagine many readers getting to the end of The Castle and not thinking that the current brazenness and addiction to outrage are, well, a real pity.
Ronson provides exacting details and insider perspectives amplifying his subjects’ psychological motivations and their consequences. The result is a mesmerizing work of gonzo journalism at its most intriguing. A provocative and disturbing look at unmoored men in distress.
