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3.48 AVERAGE
3.48 AVERAGE
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
fast-paced
dark
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
sad
tense
I didn't like my first David Grossman book - [b:Be My Knife|60371|Be My Knife|David Grossman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1170541653s/60371.jpg|2498858] and I can't say I enjoyed this one either, though it had a lot to recommend it.
A Jewish stand up comedian gives his last show, full of bile, self-loathing, contempt for himself and his audience, and guilt purely on his own account, though he does manage to also provoke it in a special guest he's asked to come and attend and comment on this his final show. An old school and army cadet friend he hasn't seen in 40 years, who has served as a judge but retired and who is recently widowed. This man is there as witness, confessor and yes, judge on the comic's act.
The remarkable achievement of this book is that Grossman manages to make it like an actual two-hour comedy show, pretty much in real time. The audience goes through the ebbs and flows, where a joke misfires, where another is a success, where the audience get annoyed because there is too much confessional story and not enough gags. We the reader feel almost exactly as the audience feel in real time as we read, their responses very much describe our own. And I think that is brave; when the audience are alienated or repulsed, so are we; When they walk out and leave, we ask ourselves whether it's worth our while staying on to read the book. I don't think the final revelation behind the comic's destructive guilt is weighty enough to grant satisfaction, but I did stay with it, unlike most of the audience who gave it up and were chalked off by the comic on his chalkboard on stage.
I thought parts of the book were derivative. Grossman cites Kafka, but actually this reminded me more of Camus' [b:The Fall|11991|The Fall|Albert Camus|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1467904855s/11991.jpg|3324245]. The stand up comedy stuff, that of the art of performing and manipulating an audience while also leaving them creative space, plus creating a character up on stage that is drawn from you but is not you and making that character highly vulnerable to the whims of the audience, I have read for real in the books by Stewart Lee such as [b:How I Escaped My Certain Fate|8538501|How I Escaped My Certain Fate|Stewart Lee|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327175398s/8538501.jpg|13406028]. But one of the devices the comic as a child used to escape or neutralise real emotions, that of standing on his hands and moving upside down so as to invert the world, reminded me of a device in a Jack Rosenthal play called "The Barmitzvah Boy". So ultimately for me, this was a rather unremarkable story about Jewish guilt; Kafka's stories are for more ingenious and subtle.
So I don't think I'll be reading any more Grossman, as 0 for 2 is not a great strike rate. Even though this book won the 2017 International Pen Prize.
A Jewish stand up comedian gives his last show, full of bile, self-loathing, contempt for himself and his audience, and guilt purely on his own account, though he does manage to also provoke it in a special guest he's asked to come and attend and comment on this his final show. An old school and army cadet friend he hasn't seen in 40 years, who has served as a judge but retired and who is recently widowed. This man is there as witness, confessor and yes, judge on the comic's act.
The remarkable achievement of this book is that Grossman manages to make it like an actual two-hour comedy show, pretty much in real time. The audience goes through the ebbs and flows, where a joke misfires, where another is a success, where the audience get annoyed because there is too much confessional story and not enough gags. We the reader feel almost exactly as the audience feel in real time as we read, their responses very much describe our own. And I think that is brave; when the audience are alienated or repulsed, so are we; When they walk out and leave, we ask ourselves whether it's worth our while staying on to read the book. I don't think the final revelation behind the comic's destructive guilt is weighty enough to grant satisfaction, but I did stay with it, unlike most of the audience who gave it up and were chalked off by the comic on his chalkboard on stage.
I thought parts of the book were derivative. Grossman cites Kafka, but actually this reminded me more of Camus' [b:The Fall|11991|The Fall|Albert Camus|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1467904855s/11991.jpg|3324245]. The stand up comedy stuff, that of the art of performing and manipulating an audience while also leaving them creative space, plus creating a character up on stage that is drawn from you but is not you and making that character highly vulnerable to the whims of the audience, I have read for real in the books by Stewart Lee such as [b:How I Escaped My Certain Fate|8538501|How I Escaped My Certain Fate|Stewart Lee|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327175398s/8538501.jpg|13406028]. But one of the devices the comic as a child used to escape or neutralise real emotions, that of standing on his hands and moving upside down so as to invert the world, reminded me of a device in a Jack Rosenthal play called "The Barmitzvah Boy". So ultimately for me, this was a rather unremarkable story about Jewish guilt; Kafka's stories are for more ingenious and subtle.
So I don't think I'll be reading any more Grossman, as 0 for 2 is not a great strike rate. Even though this book won the 2017 International Pen Prize.
This is a painful read. There were several times that I almost gave up. A stand up comedian is weaving jokes into an accounting of his life and at first the telling was disjointed and hard to stay with. As the routine progresses though, his life story takes over and I found the story compelling.
Read this for a book club, otherwise I probably wouldn't have finished it. It was incredibely boring and hard to read. I felt like one of the audience, waiting for the point of the story while someone tries to make me quit. There isn't one.
I didn’t put it down, though I wanted to a number of times. The stand up premise, described in other reviews, could’ve worked well but I felt that it dragged and got repetitive in his self deprecation.
In the end I was glad I stuck it out, to remember the horrors of survivors and the generational trauma that affects everyone around them.
In the end I was glad I stuck it out, to remember the horrors of survivors and the generational trauma that affects everyone around them.
This was an addictive read that unfortunately fell a little flat for me. At first, I really liked the quippy nature of Dovaleh. I settled myself in for a comedic fest, and like the audience I felt like leaving and that I hadn't gotten what I expected. This is really the story of how Dovaleh coerces an old childhood friend to come to his stand-up show to reveal the reason behind why they hadn't seen each other in years. There is this overarching narrative that pisses off patrons because it's not comedic, however, he intersperses comedy into his performance. Nothing that actually made me laugh but that's alright; the comedic effect of stand-up is lost when translated to text. Dovaleh's performance style got on my nerves towards the ending because he kept interrupting his story or saying things like "I'm being serious now" which was over used and got annoying. Or the fact that he only "comedically" attacked women in the audience. I did enjoy the pacing of the narrative and the narrator who was semi-analysing the show as it went on. On the whole, I enjoyed it despite being annoyed through the second half of the novel. I will be very shocked if this wins the Man Booker International Prize.
