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3.48 AVERAGE
3.48 AVERAGE
Dovaleh Greenstein is a 57 year old stand-up comedian. The novel follows Dovaleh’s stand-up performance in a small town in Israel over the course of one night. This book is not divided into sections. It is one long text divided into paragraphs. Readers cannot finish a chapter and take a break before going into the next chapter ☹ . This is very much like having to sit through the stand-up performance whether the audience likes it or not. That was definitely what Dovaleh’s performance was to his audience.
The story is narrated by a childhood friend of Dovaleh, now a retired judge (Avishai Lazar), who was invited by Dovaleh to pass a verdict on his character. During the course of the night, Dovaleh delivers a performance which starts with targeted jokes at the audience and gradually turns into a painful confession about his life.
It is a known fact that most comedians have suffered and are hiding the pain. Their routines are at the expense of their pain/suffering. Comedy seems to be a way to deal with the pain. This is true for our Dovaleh too. He has a painful past and comedy has been his medium to hide the pain. This particular stand-up routine was Dovaleh’s final and this is where he acknowledges the pain in front of everyone. In the end, the audience, or what’s left of it, learnt what it means to be alive, to have been hurt and how hard it is to live with the relentless memory of the suffering.
The story talks about the nature of human relationships, avoidance, running away and finally coming to terms with reality. It talks about loss, the shame and having to live with the decisions we once made.
As a reader, there were many things in this book which shocked me. What amazed me was the author’s ability to convey the shocking details without actually stating the fact.
“.... and apart from all that she also had on her wrist, on both wrists”—he holds his thin forearms up—“these delicate little stitches, the finest vein embroidery, which the top-rated needleworkers gave her at Bikur Holim Hospital.”
“She was an excellent student, she played the piano, there was talk of recitals, but that was it, she finished the Shoah when she was twenty and she’d spent six months of the war in a single train car, I told you that. They hid her there for half a year, three Polish train engineers in a little compartment on a train that ran back and forth on the same tracks. They took turns guarding her; she told me that once, and she gave this crooked laugh I’d never heard before.”
It is virtually impossible to give any more details about the book without giving spoilers. Hence, I will end this note with an extract from an article about the book I read online.
“In the end, it's not as much about comedy as it is about witness: Greenstein needs someone to validate his pain, to let him know that he really has survived a life that's kicked him time and time again. As Lazar reflects toward the end of the novel, "I believe he is reminding me of his request: that thing that comes out of a person without his control. That's what he wanted me to tell him. It cannot be put into words, I realize, and that must be the point of it." It's hard to put any kind of pain into words, but Grossman does it absolutely perfectly.”
The story is narrated by a childhood friend of Dovaleh, now a retired judge (Avishai Lazar), who was invited by Dovaleh to pass a verdict on his character. During the course of the night, Dovaleh delivers a performance which starts with targeted jokes at the audience and gradually turns into a painful confession about his life.
It is a known fact that most comedians have suffered and are hiding the pain. Their routines are at the expense of their pain/suffering. Comedy seems to be a way to deal with the pain. This is true for our Dovaleh too. He has a painful past and comedy has been his medium to hide the pain. This particular stand-up routine was Dovaleh’s final and this is where he acknowledges the pain in front of everyone. In the end, the audience, or what’s left of it, learnt what it means to be alive, to have been hurt and how hard it is to live with the relentless memory of the suffering.
The story talks about the nature of human relationships, avoidance, running away and finally coming to terms with reality. It talks about loss, the shame and having to live with the decisions we once made.
As a reader, there were many things in this book which shocked me. What amazed me was the author’s ability to convey the shocking details without actually stating the fact.
“.... and apart from all that she also had on her wrist, on both wrists”—he holds his thin forearms up—“these delicate little stitches, the finest vein embroidery, which the top-rated needleworkers gave her at Bikur Holim Hospital.”
“She was an excellent student, she played the piano, there was talk of recitals, but that was it, she finished the Shoah when she was twenty and she’d spent six months of the war in a single train car, I told you that. They hid her there for half a year, three Polish train engineers in a little compartment on a train that ran back and forth on the same tracks. They took turns guarding her; she told me that once, and she gave this crooked laugh I’d never heard before.”
It is virtually impossible to give any more details about the book without giving spoilers. Hence, I will end this note with an extract from an article about the book I read online.
“In the end, it's not as much about comedy as it is about witness: Greenstein needs someone to validate his pain, to let him know that he really has survived a life that's kicked him time and time again. As Lazar reflects toward the end of the novel, "I believe he is reminding me of his request: that thing that comes out of a person without his control. That's what he wanted me to tell him. It cannot be put into words, I realize, and that must be the point of it." It's hard to put any kind of pain into words, but Grossman does it absolutely perfectly.”
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
A cool concept but I would have been one of the audience members who walked out tbh.
Set in a single evening during a stand-up comedy set like no other you witness a man falling apart through this unsettling cathartic performance. An emotional, unsettling yet frequently funny read.
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
4.5 stars, rounded up
In Nanette, Hannah Gadsby rejects self-deprecating humour, saying "It’s not humility, it's humiliation." In this book, Dovaleh G, the aging stand-up comic, recognizes the same truism - but chooses to wallow in it instead.
This is an uncomfortable read, an acerbic deconstruction of the comic's need to please his audience by telling straightforward jokes, often at the cost of his complex past, his humanity. He's scattershot on stage, but as the evening (and the narrative) unravels, it's clear that he is far from scatterbrained - his act is merely a taped-up vessel for the tragedies he carries within himself until the only ones left in the audience are the ones who he needs to listen to his story - and us, the readers.
There is little by the way of resolution or relief here - only pain exhaled into the world, finally. For a novel about laughter and its absurdities, this is a devastating read. You will want to tear your eyes away - but you won't. Because Dovaleh G, and David Grossman (same initials), have the audacity to be self-flagellating and honest in a way most of us can only dare to be
In Nanette, Hannah Gadsby rejects self-deprecating humour, saying "It’s not humility, it's humiliation." In this book, Dovaleh G, the aging stand-up comic, recognizes the same truism - but chooses to wallow in it instead.
This is an uncomfortable read, an acerbic deconstruction of the comic's need to please his audience by telling straightforward jokes, often at the cost of his complex past, his humanity. He's scattershot on stage, but as the evening (and the narrative) unravels, it's clear that he is far from scatterbrained - his act is merely a taped-up vessel for the tragedies he carries within himself until the only ones left in the audience are the ones who he needs to listen to his story - and us, the readers.
There is little by the way of resolution or relief here - only pain exhaled into the world, finally. For a novel about laughter and its absurdities, this is a devastating read. You will want to tear your eyes away - but you won't. Because Dovaleh G, and David Grossman (same initials), have the audacity to be self-flagellating and honest in a way most of us can only dare to be
A really wonderful and moving novel. Didn't always go in the directions I was hoping it would go, but it's a really moving story told through an incredibly unique frame narrative. 6.5/10
I must have read a different book from the reviewers, because the central character, the stand-up comedian, is in no way funny. I smirked at maybe one joke, tops. I feel like I would have gotten more out of this novel if I understood more about domestic Israeli politics—there were regional jabs in here and many of the jokes about the adolescent summer/military bootcamp just went right over my head—but I'm not sure how much more I would have gotten. David Grossman's other works are supposed to be delicate and pensive; this is anything but. Maybe I'm callous, but I also didn't think the central conflict of the story (that the comic has to leave camp early to go to the funeral of one of his parents, but they forget to tell him which one) is that much of a conflict. Or how that can be so fundamentally life changing. Guess I'm cold. :/
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is basically you, as the reader, following the breakdown of a man named Dovaleh as he staggers through what is supposed to be an evening of stand up comedy. The humour is never good, the jokes are always straddling the line of propriety and political correctness, and they often cross right over into offensive. Seemingly sensitive subjects like Israel, the Holocaust, the Palestinians, are treated with shocking crassness.
There are many points in this book where I was tempted to up and leave, much like the audience in the book gets up and leaves. However, I think it's structured in a really brilliant way in that, the longer you stay, like the audience in the book itself, the more of Dovaleh you get to see. It is not an easy book to read, and I am not entirely sure what kept me going. By the time I had reached the middle however, I was invested in it. I wanted to know more about this little boy, about what happened to him, about why he grew into a man who was okay with punching himself for a few uncomfortable laughs from a bunch of strangers. I felt like I really had to force myself through some parts of the book, yet it never quite occurred to me to stop reading it, to give up on it. It was oddly compelling, which I suppose is a feat in itself. And finishing it gave me a real sense of relief, like feeling the water dribbling out of your ears after being logged in for hours.
At the end of it though, I think the book fails to truly deliver on its potential. The pain of a boy being bullied, with a fraught relationship with his father, and a complicated one with his mother doesn't truly come through. The friend's guilt for being a self absorbed kid, in a way kids often are self absorbed, falls a little flat. The best part of the book is the tension of the drive from the camp to the funeral, and you can really feel each agonising beat of time that the young Dovaleh spends wondering which of his parents he has lost.
After I finished the book, I messaged the friend who recommended it to me and told him I felt conflicted about the book. That it had made me think and I was not entirely sure I was happy about where my mind went. He responded, "I guess then it did its job". Which about sums it up, I think.
There are many points in this book where I was tempted to up and leave, much like the audience in the book gets up and leaves. However, I think it's structured in a really brilliant way in that, the longer you stay, like the audience in the book itself, the more of Dovaleh you get to see. It is not an easy book to read, and I am not entirely sure what kept me going. By the time I had reached the middle however, I was invested in it. I wanted to know more about this little boy, about what happened to him, about why he grew into a man who was okay with punching himself for a few uncomfortable laughs from a bunch of strangers. I felt like I really had to force myself through some parts of the book, yet it never quite occurred to me to stop reading it, to give up on it. It was oddly compelling, which I suppose is a feat in itself. And finishing it gave me a real sense of relief, like feeling the water dribbling out of your ears after being logged in for hours.
At the end of it though, I think the book fails to truly deliver on its potential. The pain of a boy being bullied, with a fraught relationship with his father, and a complicated one with his mother doesn't truly come through. The friend's guilt for being a self absorbed kid, in a way kids often are self absorbed, falls a little flat. The best part of the book is the tension of the drive from the camp to the funeral, and you can really feel each agonising beat of time that the young Dovaleh spends wondering which of his parents he has lost.
After I finished the book, I messaged the friend who recommended it to me and told him I felt conflicted about the book. That it had made me think and I was not entirely sure I was happy about where my mind went. He responded, "I guess then it did its job". Which about sums it up, I think.