Rating: 5/5
Review:
Gripping and memorable
This is not a relaxing read but it's a completely gripping,
memorable and rather brilliant one. I
only tried it because I'd heard it favourably spoken of; I rather expected to
hate it, but it turned out to be excellent.
A summary of A Horse Walks Into A Bar sounds pretty
off-putting: set in Israel (and translated from the Hebrew), it is narrated by
a retired judge who receives a completely unexpected phone call from Devaleh, with
whom he was, briefly, good friends at school.
Devaleh asks him to attend his stand-up act observe and speak honestly
to him afterward. Almost the whole book
is then an account of the evening as Devaleh, who is plainly ill and possibly
dying, mixes a little conventional stand-up with an account of the trauma of
his childhood as he comes near to breakdown on stage. In fact, it was excellent and I was
completely riveted by the whole thing; I was very keen to know what happened
next both in Devaleh's story and in the comedy bar where the audience are
finding his performance very troubling, to say the least.
It's very edgy stuff a lot of the time. There are a few genuine laugh-out-loud gags,
but even the comedy routine is often disturbing – for example, a comedy riff on
Dr Mengele is always going to divide an audience, shall we say. Dev's story is brilliantly told as the
comedic aspect of being a picked-on putz becomes steadily more serious, and the
brilliance of writing – and translation – had me right there feeling the same elation
and extreme discomfort described in the audience. There is some very important stuff here, with
genuine psychological insights and a fine illustration that comedy and human
pain are often closely linked.
I found this original, enthralling, unsettling and very
moving. Warmly recommended.
(I received and ARC via Netgalley.)
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