David Grossman

A comedy club in a small Israeli town. An audience has come expecting an evening of amusement. Instead they see a comedian falling apart on stage ; an act of disintegration, a man crumbling, as a matter of choice, before their eyes. Dovaleh G, a veteran stand-up comic - charming, erratic, repellent - exposes a wound he has been living with for years : a fateful and gruesome choice he had to make between the two people who were dearest to him. Flaying alive both himself and the people watching him, Dov provokes revulsion and empathy from an audience that doesn't know whether to laugh or cry - and all this in the presence of a former childhood friend who is trying to understand why he's been summoned to this performance...

A Horse Walks Into a Bar

"A stand-up comedian recalls some of his darkest moments and traumatic memories from childhood on stage in front of a live audience"--

Prashanth Srivatsa

While we're still in the era of taking offense, and maybe even beyond it, this book will find relevance. Set in a pub of sorts that is hosting a stand-up comedy show, the plot revolves around the performer, who, as the show gradually progresses, finds himself slipping into his haunting past, all the while dealing with the varied emotions (mostly annoyed) of his audience. Grossman paints his protagonist as offensive, disturbed and not particularly effective with comebacks. But the book is not about the art; it is about people, about the basest thoughts of existence. Both laugh-out-loud funny and tragic, it's simply unforgettable!

Alexia

3.5 stars, I think. Gathering my thoughts for the review.

Moray Lyle McIntosh

Once again David Grossman reveals his genius for creating hugely affecting and yet appalling characters. The premise is quite simple. The narrator (court judge Avishai Lazar) has been invited to watch a stand-up performance by a man he briefly knew as a boy. This performance, recorded “verbatim” along with reactions from the audience and reminiscences by the narrator. As the show develops it becomes increasingly and intensely personal as the comic relates a painful event from his childhood. Sometimes he plays this for laughs with the blackest of humour but increasingly loses his hold on his comedy and his audience. It is a slow but inevitable collapse of a routine and a man. Simple, yes, but easy? No. There are very few writers with the vision and the control necessary to make such a narrative a success but Grossman is one of them. 

There were times when I hated this book. I hated the crassness of many of the jokes, the casual prejudice, a deep unpleasantness in the way Dovaleh Greenstein plays the tragedy and cruelty of the Arab-Israeli conflict for cheap laughs and thinks nothing of stooping to the lowest common denominator. But this is precisely where Grossman’s talent shines because it is a pitch-perfect rendering of the best and worst of stand-up comedy with all the pitfalls and pratfalls laid bare. After all there is something deeply (if not always commendably) human in our capacity to make a (bad) joke out of anything. Anything for a laugh. 

One Grossman’s great talents is his facility for placing the ridiculous and the painful side by side so that both are heart-breaking. By interspersing the sometimes humorous often uncomfortable ranting of Davoleh and his sudden bursts of self-contempt and violence, with the memories of his former friend and current audience-member we form a complex picture of a deeply flawed man. It is natural to despise him but Grossman won’t let you rest on that, he will not let you take the easy way out. As he spins out the story of his life the unpleasantness of his character and manner become less about a person and more about the tragedy of lives spoilt by conflict and propaganda and a context which seeks to destroy the ability to feel compassion and empathy. Davoleh is a product of his surroundings and his experience and that is the really tragic joke.

“How did [Davoleh] do that?” Lazar wonders at one point “How, in such a short time, did he manage to turn the audience, even me to some extent, into household members of his soul? And into his hostages?”. One might wonder the same about Grossman who can push and prod you to the very edge of giving up in disgust and always reel you back in

Amanda Wells

I started this book last year, but due to many distractions I put it down after twenty pages. 

This time I don't quite know how I put it down, because this story is breathless. It is a rampage. Memories, desperate jokes - I almost feel sweaty having read it. It is touching in an almost Bukowski way, where you can see through the film of dirt that the authorial voice throws up to a very vulnerable person. 

I only just finished the book, so I'm not quite sure I'm ready to order my thoughts on it much more than that - but it is definitely worthy of its acclaim, and I'm glad I read it.

Shreerag Plakazhi

Its compelling at times and downright a drag at others. I don't get how its always these kids of books that win the Booker.

arden

Nicholas Hertz

Marek R

Chanh

Dov Greenstein, a comedian a bit past his prime, is doing a night of stand-up in a dive in a small Israeli city. In the audience are some whom Dov knew as a boy, an awkward, scrawny kid who walked on his hands to confound the neighborhood bullies. Gradually Dov's patter becomes a kind of memoir: we meet his mother, a Holocaust survivor in need of constant monitoring, and his punishing father, a striver who had little understanding of his creative son; Dov recalls his week at a military camp for youth; and shares a story of loss and survival.

A Novel

Morgan Thomas

Hafsa

WINNER OF THE 2017 MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE In a dive bar in a small Israeli city, Dov Greenstein, a comedian a bit past his prime, takes the stage for his final show. Over the course of a single evening, Dov’s patter becomes a kind of memoir, taking us back into the terrors of his childhood. And in the dance between comic and audience, a deeper story begins to take shape as Dov confronts the decision that has shaped the course of his life—a story that will alter the lives of several of those in attendance. A poignant exploration of how people confront life’s capricious battering, A Horse Walks into a Bar is a searing story of loss and survival.

A Horse Walks Into a Bar

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