Jon Ronson's new book, The Castle, begins as a gonzo investigation into Chris Mark, a sixtysomething steel heir who invites young women to his Connecticut castle to be "adapted" into "princesses" for a reality show, and spirals into a broader, looser meditation on modern masculinity. The reviewer finds Ronson's trademark mix of comic self-deprecation and dogged reporting compelling in the Mark strand, but argues the book's subtitle, Adventures in a World of Unravelling Men, exposes its more scattered, essay-like structure as it jumps between unrelated case studies of men navigating contradictory social pressures.

Ronson uncovers troubling details about Mark, including alleged plans for a $2,500-an-hour floating brothel and a woman flown in from Poland and later sent home by authorities amid safety concerns, while also probing but ultimately dismissing suspicions that Mark killed his father in a 2009 boating accident. Beyond Mark, the book features an Australian man forced to publicly "apologise for rape" by a teacher, a father wrongly accused online of kidnapping his own daughters, actor Armie Hammer, and Ronson's fraught history with Father Ted co-creator Graham Linehan, though the reviewer feels these digressions and forced parallels dilute rather than deepen the book's insight.