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nadiasfiction 's review for:
סוס אחד נכנס לבר
by David Grossman, דויד גרוסמן
If there's one genre that is difficult to translate, it's jokes, and Jessica Cohen has created magic with her translation from the Hebrew. The translation is not only fluid and natural, it just never makes its presence felt. I also loved the German and Hebrew sentences left untranslated in the dialogues (not many), the world should not be reduced to monolingualism, nor be normative.
The form of this story is challenging, Grossman went all experimental in this. The book opens in a comedy club in Netanya, and the story follows the stand-up comedy act of Dovaleh who is going to give one heck of a strange performance.
The twists and turns of this live show are narrated by Avishai, a retired judge with whom Dovaleh was acquainted as a teen and who was invited out of the blue by Dovi, after decades of having lost touch.
What happened to Dovi since they last saw each other, and what has pushed him to open up to an audience of strangers who just came for jokes, are what the story will slowly reveal.
What I loved about Grossman is that he explicitly stated my role in this: he turned me into an audience member who could walk out of the experience at anytime, as easily as I could have walked out the door of the club. It's a thought provoking take on our reading experience in relation to the author who knows this can happen but cannot help her or his style of delivery. Dovi is desperate to be listened to, and to get out of his mind and body, a deeply wounding story. But will his audience stay?
It a challenging frame to adopt for a novel, and Grossman anticipates the exasperation of the reader all the way with little tricks that show his precise awareness of the timing & effect of his narration. I was exasperated many times but it's a short novel (200 pages), and it was rewarding to stick it to the end.
The form of this story is challenging, Grossman went all experimental in this. The book opens in a comedy club in Netanya, and the story follows the stand-up comedy act of Dovaleh who is going to give one heck of a strange performance.
The twists and turns of this live show are narrated by Avishai, a retired judge with whom Dovaleh was acquainted as a teen and who was invited out of the blue by Dovi, after decades of having lost touch.
What happened to Dovi since they last saw each other, and what has pushed him to open up to an audience of strangers who just came for jokes, are what the story will slowly reveal.
What I loved about Grossman is that he explicitly stated my role in this: he turned me into an audience member who could walk out of the experience at anytime, as easily as I could have walked out the door of the club. It's a thought provoking take on our reading experience in relation to the author who knows this can happen but cannot help her or his style of delivery. Dovi is desperate to be listened to, and to get out of his mind and body, a deeply wounding story. But will his audience stay?
It a challenging frame to adopt for a novel, and Grossman anticipates the exasperation of the reader all the way with little tricks that show his precise awareness of the timing & effect of his narration. I was exasperated many times but it's a short novel (200 pages), and it was rewarding to stick it to the end.