I found Under the Net to have quite a few similarities to The Ginger Man, partially due to Iris Murdoch’s writing style not causing me to cringe, but mainly due to Jack Donaghue. Despite his flaws, I still found myself liking Jack. Now that I’m finished with the novel, I thought I would describe some of the two protagonists’ essential differences.

1.When Sebastian gets drunk, he starts violent bar fights. When Jake gets drunk, he sends love letters.

2.Neither of them make a great deal of money, but at least Jake works. Sebastian intends to go to the park and study law, and instead he flirts with his neighbor while his daughter is present. Jake, when he realizes he needs money, gets a job that sounds to me like one of the worst available: an orderly at a hospital cleaning up after patients.

3.Jake’s friends are much better people than Sebastian’s friends, some of whom are more disgusting than Sebastian himself.

4.For Sebastian, freeloading off his friends is a regular way of life. But when Jake thinks he betrayed his friend’s trust and friendship, he feels horribly. (Also, Sebastian does not have a conscience.)

5.Sebastian probably has STDs. Jake, on the other hand, goes after one woman throughout the entire book, and at the end when he realizes she’s really not interested in picking up where they left off, he stops. Jake also has opportunities with other women, which he politely declines.

6.While I wouldn’t trust Sebastian within a 50 mile radius of his own daughter, the relationship between Jake and the dog Mars is one of my favorite parts of the book. Jake begins by kidnapping Mars to use as leverage to get back something that was taken from him. By the time Jake finds out that the person who had Mars before has no desire to get him back, he and the dog are already close friends.

Jake is by no means perfect, but with a solid balance of positive and negative qualities Jake is a much more fascinating and relate-able fictional character than Sebastian will ever be.