This is a story about a Stand-up 'comedy' show. Stand-up routines are often controversial and the laughs usually come at someone else's expense. In this case the Comedian essentially tells the audience his life story, with a few jokes thrown in. However, it is generally not a happy tale.

Reading this book I felt that I was there, one of the audience, watching, listening, smiling, laughing, sometimes cringing. Cringing quite a lot actually. It is not the show you came to see but you cannot leave, though you feel very uncomfortable. You have to stay right there until the end, whatever happens.

A very original book.

A masterful performance - funny, tender, suspenseful, heartbreaking.

Despite the title of this book, it is not going to make you laugh. It is a compulsive and harrowing read. It is about Jewish history, the dysfunctional nation of Israel and its people, where the political is heartbreakingly personal. The narrative covers two hours of a middle aged stand up comic's routine, albeit an unusual one where Dovaleh Greenstein spews forth the horrors that have comprised his life. It is set in a club in Netanya, with a broad section of Israeli society watching him as he begins by telling terrible jokes. He comes across as repulsive, haranguing his audience, virtually inviting their hostility.

The narrative is delivered through an invited guest to the show, retired judge Avishai Lazar, a childhood friend. At military camp where Dov was mercilessly bullied, the judge wonders why he is there, then he thinks he knows why he is there, but like the rest of the audience and the reader, he knows nothing. As Dov's rants and insults grow, a large part of the audience begins to leave and by the end there are but a handful of individuals left. We hear of Dov's parents, his violent father, his vulnerable and broken mother, and the litany of the slings and arrows that life has thrown at him. His unravelling has him metaphorically beating his chest, with tears running down his face, screaming this is who I am, this is the world that I have lived in. This is a story of bone deep pain, grief, loss, a country that has lost its way, lies, betrayal, treachery, survival and guilt. It is about recognising the value of a human life and soul that has undergone such trauma.

Grossman achieves a remarkable turnaround as we come to both understand and empathise with Dov. More to the point, we see ourselves and the world in Dovaleh and the life he has lived. For me, there is no doubt this has been a excruciating and claustrophobic read at times, It is a short book which encapsulates major themes in what it is to be human, the nature of relationships, politics and trauma. I highly recommend this book in the spirit of it is what you need to read although it may not be what you want to read. Thanks to Random House Vintage for an ARC.

The most uncomfortable read! This book is incredibly well written, just not enjoyable. I felt that I was in the club experiencing the show, but, unable to stop it or leave. It's perfectly put together and expressive, all of which made me relieved when I'd finished. So, very grateful to have had the opportunity to preview this book, particularly as it's not one I'd have chosen and I congratulate the author on the accolades received, but, gosh I was glad to finish it!

A Horse Walks Into a Bar is undeniably dark. It focuses on a stand-up comedian telling the tale of his miserable life in the face of an increasingly hostile crowd that just wants light entertainment. It is claustrophobic; the action hardly departs from the small-town nightclub Dovaleh is performing in, other than through his reminiscences. It is uncomfortable, as Grossman places us firmly in the audience watching this man fall apart, through the eyes of an old acquaintance that Dovaleh has asked to attend. The reader squirms right along with the audience and the performer as his attempts to get through his tale fall flat, or even provoke outrage. It is compelling, as the novel forces you to choose between walking out on Dovaleh's act. like some of the characters, or staying the course to hear the final punchline. It is also funny; some of the jokes that Dovaleh delivers in the course of his monologue cracked me up.

Coming from a city and country where stand-up comedians are an integral part of our popular culture, I was attracted to this book's premise, and I wasn't disappointed. I have seen shows like Dovaleh's, where the comedian departed from jokes and ventured into the deeply personal, and I've seen the audience response. I've seen guys walk out of a comedian's account of his experience with multiple sclerosis because it wasn't funny enough for them. Grossman captured this awkward "should we really be laughing?" dynamic perfectly, and gives us a perfect rendition of a quintessential sad clown.

This was not an easy book to read; which sounds contradictory and ironic since it is book structured around a stand up comedy sketch. The novel tentatively feels its way along the boundaries between what is funny and what isn’t, slipping and sliding in and over each other; eventually collapsing the one into the other in a grotesque heap. The pull and loosening of tension provides an incredible rollercoaster read.

The novel deals with our boundaries with others; people who we loved that we carry within, our need for people/affection but also our need to be separate. It is also a story about our expectations and the chaos and unpredictability of life and the horror of tragedy in a child’s past (which seeps in from the horror of his parent’s life). I really laboured to read this initially; my reflections mirrored in the narrator’s (the judge’s) own struggle throughout (bringing his own tragedy and pain to the show/novel with him). This is what we do as readers/audience/spectators’ – we let performances/books wash over us but they are unable to wash away our own internal pain completely.

There was a dichotomy between audience and myself, as reader, in this novel; while the audience wanted jokes, I, as reader, was drawn towards the unravelling of the story of Doveloh’s first funeral (in spite of the pain and rawness of it all).

Dovaleh’s comedy is vulgar, abusive at times and we are repelled by the comedian, he has been seriously unwell (physically and mentally), which explains why he comes undone, why he chooses to come undone under the eyes of the judge, his childhood friend. He becomes the ugly face of truth when comedy and tragedy are stripped away.

Dovaleh falls apart through a story which actually pieces together who he is/has become/has lived. He explains why he has turned to comedy; he remembers how he liked to make his suffering mother laugh; only he could make her smile that particular way when as a child he did private shows for her. He goes into great detail about the driver who during the defining moments of Dovaleh’s abject misery (as he hurtles towards certain grief) unthinkingly turned to comedy as distraction.

The audience in the novel often acts as a whole but also splinters off into the diverse people, and their own set of demands and needs from the evening. The audience take turns in sustaining or turning against him. Grossman displays the power of a comedian in providing a choreography; pumping up his audience, reeling them in, letting them go and the audience’s own need to forget themselves and be one of a crowd.

Only the judge himself has been personally invited by Dovaleh. To observe, as we do. He sees Dovaleh through his own memories, as he is now and through his own grief, even filters his judgement through his wife’s criticism, he feels her within him. His grief is a very live thing and this binds him to Dovaleh.

Apart from the judge, the other important audience member is a woman who also knew Dovaleh as a child. A misfit herself (she is small, she has a speech impediment, ironically her feet don’t touch the ground), she is manicurist and medium and yet provides the grounding/realist/grim view to Dovaleh’s comedy. She has no sense of humour and battles for literal truth; she is rooted in the reality of Dovaleh’s childhood self before he had to mask himself/his pain or build up the barrier of comedy. She sees him for what he is and denies his comedy and his meanness thereby causing a catalyst to his coming undone (indeed her initial conversation with Dovaleh is a pivotal point to his stand up comedy sketch), or to the only story he needed to tell. She, like the judge, is taking notes. She battles for literal truth and in this way Dovaleh is completely exposed and debilitated in front of her. The judge sees her as Eurycleia (Odysseus’ elderly nanny) because she was able to recognise Dovaleh’s true self via his scar/the wound that was his childhood.

Grossman is brilliant in displaying Dovaleh’s own internal and external battle – often through physical violence (self inflicted, the punchline itself!) and through his words. He has a childish impulse to tally up, like he had done so in his drive to the funeral. Tallying up has caused the biggest scar in Dovaleh’s life and is also represented by the blackboard (which indicates some sort of premeditation, along with his request that the judge be present and the fact that this is his birthday and consequently somehow a symbolic day for Dovaleh). This need for control over what he can’t control reflects the first tally he made that has infected and poisoned his whole life.

The title ‘A Horse Walks into a Bar’ refers to a joke the driver begins to tell Dovaleh as he travels towards the truth and the horrible internal battle rages inside him. He doesn’t tell us the punch line, instead the narration swerves into Dovaleh’s internal hell and the narrator’s own self questioning.

This is a novel of desperation, grief and loss but ultimately it is also a story about the redeeming nature of friendship.

A horse walks into a bar by David Grossman is an uncomfortable read to say the least.

Dovaleh (David) is an ageing stand up comic performing in a poorly attended bar in Netanyah in Israel. Instead of telling the jokes that the audience had expected they are exposed to the detail of his personal tragedy and some formative events from his childhood years. Several of the audience members turn out to be old friends who had been invited to this performance at whom the personal pain is partly directed.

This is one of several books by Israeli authors focussed on the the early life stories of the children of Holocaust survivors who arrived in Israel before 1948. The parents were scarred by the events they experienced and then had to adapt to making a new life in a new country, the children struggled to balance integration in the evolving Israeli society with their loyalty to their parents. Dovaleh is one of these kids.

This is a profoundly disturbing read, I felt like a voyeur who was compelled to watch someone's melt down and unable to turn away. I can't say that I enjoyed it but I didn't want to put it down until I had finished it. The end was a little flat but perhaps after the emotional rollercoaster ride that was a relief rather than a disappointment.

A raw and unflinching portrait of self-loathing unwinds from this book as a comedian takes to the stage and, amidst the brutal jokes and self-inflicted violence, recounts a haunting episode from his past which also epitomises his life, at least in his view.

This is a blistering tour de force as Grossman's breathless prose (no chapters, no breaks) packs a number of personal histories into such a short piece alongside national and racial histories. The voices are flawless: the self-lacerating 'comedian', the cool 'judge', the audience member who remembers Dov as a boy - and, with no exposition, the real story emerges from the margins and interstices of what we're told.

This isn't easy reading, either technically or emotionally, but it packs more pain, more power into c.200 pages than many novels do in double the length.

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Never knowing what’s coming next: ‘A Horse Walks into a Bar’ by David Grossman
Posted on June 13, 2017 by shoshibookblog
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Grossman’s novel begins enthusiastically and with cringing embarrassment. ”Good evening! Good evening! Good evening to the majestic city of Caesariyaaaaaah!’ … A short, slight, bespectacled man lurches onto the stage from a side door, as if he’d been kicked through it. He takes a few faltering steps, trips, brakes himself on the wooden floor with both hands, then sharply juts his rear-end straight up.‘ It’s the exuberant beginning of Dovaleh G’s stand up show, and is only the first kick (physical and metaphorical) Dovaleh is going to receive in front of his scattered audience. Oh, and they’re not in Caesarea, the setting is Netanya, a completely different town on the Israeli coast.

Wondering why he is witnessing all this, is a retired judge with a list of good reasons for not wanting to watch the show. He’s there because of a childhood connection with Dovaleh, in fact it soon becomes apparent that the performance is all about the comic’s traumatic past. In terms of hysterical soul-baring ‘A Horse Walks into a Bar’ reminded me of early Philip Roth novels, but while the joke with ‘Portnoy’ is that he doesn’t really have anything to complain about, the tormented Dovaleh does. On this night especially, he is determined to tell the defining story of his life, a story that begins with child abuse and bullying and then digs deeper and deeper into how humans behave to each other and to themselves.

From his plan for the performance to his offensive jokes to the brutal way he insults and even hits himself on stage (”Hello! It’s a stand-up show! Do you still not get that? Putz!’ He gives his forehead a loud, unfathomably powerful smack. ‘That’s what they’re here for! They’re here to laugh at you!”), everything about Dovaleh’s story is shocking and disturbing. The result is one of the most striking books on the Man Booker International Shortlist. Grossman’s premise is that his anti-hero must walk the finest of lines in telling his desperately un-funny life-story while retaining his audience. It’s a balancing act that shouldn’t work; indeed, from the judge’s perspective we hear of heckling, walk-outs and an unexpected guest who almost derails the whole show. To witness such a evening might be excruciating, to read a world-class author present it is exhilarating. The Man Booker International Prize will be announced tomorrow, and this brave and painful novel is exactly the kind of work I count on them to publicise for those of us seeking the new and brilliant in translated fiction.

A very different read from what I am used to - thankfully! Very self indulgent and as much as I tried, I had no sympathy for the main character. I eventually got bored and had to give up which I hate doing but my TBR list is not allowing me to waste time on a book like this. Don't bother with it 👎

This book has some wonderful features. Firstly, the premise of a stand-up comedian revealing his personal trauma while on stage is an intriguing and entertaining narrative vehicle. Grossman really uses the setting to his advantage, with some very awkward moments where the comic's joke fall on a silent or increasingly disgruntled audience. The tension is palpable.

Grossman uses the book to explore the impact of loss - parental, cultural, national - while giving us a portrait of modern Israel., The comic's parents represent an old Israel defined by its Holocaust-surviving inhabitants and their loss is a metaphor for the journey the country is taking to define itself as that generation fades.

The book is small (around 200 pages) but a dense and complex read. I struggled to keep engaged and enthused at some points, often finding the comic's narrative repetitive and slow. My frustrations were echoed by the audience's impatience as if Grossman deliberately planted those scenes to aggravate his literary and real-life audience simultaneously.

It's a much heavier read that you'd expect from the blurb and it's packed with emotional trauma. It's well crafted and beautifully translated; I appreciated its artistry but it was a little too dour for me to really enjoy it.

This challenging and enigmatic novel takes place over two hours in a comedy club in a small town in Israel. Dovaleh Greenstein, a middle-aged comedian, through a series of often brutal jokes and increasingly personal revelations, which reach back to a traumatic childhood event, gradually disintegrates in front of his audience’s eyes. He’s a deeply troubled man but his listeners gradually come to the end of their patience with his ramblings until the only one left is an old childhood friend, a retired judge, whom Dov invited to be a witness to his outpourings. I found this quite a troubling book in that I’m not sure what the point of it is. I can see that Dov is haunted by his past and in fact haunted by the past of all Jews. I can see also that his friend is there to perhaps judge him or perhaps absolve him. It’s uncomfortable listening to some of the jokes. Any book that deals with Jewish suffering is as relevant as ever – and as heart-breaking. But……I felt little for Dov, in spite of his obvious trauma. I felt no sympathy for him. I couldn’t see why he chose that particular method of pouring out his heart and soul – surely knowing that he would alienate his audience. What, ultimately does he achieve? I certainly didn’t enjoy the book, much as I wouldn’t have enjoyed being there in that club. Right now I’m still feeling ambivalent about what I think of the book as a work of literature. Has it been over-hyped? Have I missed something? Not sure. It is, nevertheless, a book that will long stay with me.

A stand-up comedian, Dovaleh G invites a retired judge to watch his show. Afterwards he wants to know what you saw…What do people know when they look at me…the thing that comes out of a person without his control. But it’s hardly an evening of comedy: even when he laughs, his look is calculating and joyless; the jokes are tasteless and cruel, and the slapstick is violent. No one is exempt – those with disabilities and even victims of the Holocaust: she had a lot of experience with camping…although her camps were more of the concentration variety.
Soon, as the jokes are dropped and the show becomes more autobiography than stand-up, members of the audience start to walk out. But, like the judge, we can’t turn away or avert our gaze. We want to know why – what has happened to the funny kid with glasses and prominent lips that the judge once knew as a child forty years previously, to turn him into this monster? As Dovaleh’s show spirals down, and the judge experiences increasingly gloomy and often angry memories, we gradually piece together a version of the story. The final scenes are stretched out to an almost unbearable breaking point as we witness the trauma that has marked Dovaleh for life and is constantly in his dreams. Such dirt on me, such pollution… God, all the way to my bones…We watch like voyeurs, but we still can’t look away. We’re gripped until the end.
This profoundly moving novel holds up the conflict inherent in using human suffering for art, the relationship between the performer and the audience, our complicity and the uncomfortable space where these all meet. We see both the inner glow. Or the inner darkness. The secret, the tremble of singularity of ordinary personal loss (the judge) and the loss that never stops and colours a whole life (Dovaleh). We see how we tell the story of our own lives to ourselves and what we choose to forget.
The overarching question raised by this deeply sad but often very wild and funny novel, is the question of anti-Semitism, the ‘Jewish’ question, whose echoes continue to reverberate down the generations since the Holocaust.
A Horse Walks into a Bar is not an easy read – it is harrowing, poignant and powerful. But it is one of the best novels I’ve read this year, and now a worthy winner of the Man Booker International Prize 2017, shared between the author, David Grossman and his English translator, Jessica Cohen.

This was my second read from the Man Booker International prize shortlist and, whilst I did not exactly 'get' this book, I can wholeheartedly see why it has garnered this acclaim.

This book was... bizarre! The novel's concept is of a stand-up comedian delivering more than just the expected one-liners and, instead, giving his audience a harsh and stark insight into culture and society. Just like the audience, as the jokes gave way to something darker, I was often left confused with what I was being served.

There was certainly power in this book and both the audience and the reader are privy to witnessing a man coming undone before their very eyes, but managing to deliver a dark and irrepressible something in the midst of his personal chaos.

The book focuses on the themes of societies horribly malfunctioning and it was an important and thought-provoking read because of that. Yet there was just something about this... Something I couldn't wholly grasp or sink my teeth into. Perhaps that is due to the immensity of the topics discoursed, or perhaps because of the abstract form of their delivery. Whatever it was, it has me at a loss to discern how I truly feel about this book. But, perhaps that is the very nature of what makes it so powerful? Because true art is never straight-forward and easy to interpret.

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

Well, I rattled through this one. A Horse Walks into a Bar is a book that grabs you and takes you with it whether you want to go or not. And some of the time I wasn’t sure if I did want to go. Dov G is an Israeli comedian of the type that insults his audience – think Lennie Bruce but not so blue, or Frankie Boyle but not so political. He homes in on his audience’s frailties and picks at scabs – both theirs and his own.

His old friend from schooldays, now a reired Judge, has come to Netanya to see Dov’s performance. The pair haven’t seen each other for 40 years but Dov has begged the Judge to come and tell him what he sees. Is there something in everyone that cannot be hidden? If so, the Judge with his experience of studying defendants will be able to see it. In the crowd is a tiny woman who also knew Dov as a child. He was nice to her then but isn’t now. She cries at his barbed comments but refuses to leave.

When the jokes come they are not always funny and even when they are there is an unpleasant background taste. Along with his stand-up Dov tells the tale of how he went to his first funeral, even though he didn’t know who had died. The audience get restless; some leave. Those remaining call for more laughs. This is not what they paid to see.

While Dov strips himself and the crowd bare, the Judge recalls his own shameful part in an incident for which he is sure Dov will excoriate him before long. He also reminisces about his dead wife. He eats and drinks but cannot seem to fill himself up.

Dov’s jokes get fewer and less funny and more people leave. The tables in the supper club are emptying. The tiny woman, Pitz, is still there and a few other stalwarts. Dov punches himself, punishes himself, makes himself bleed. The revelation of the cause of his self-hatred is not totally unexpected but still, it could have been otherwise. He wipes the sweat from his brow, says ‘Goodnight Netanya’ to the almost empty club, and finishes what is probably his last ever performance.

This is an unusual and brilliant book. The stage show is presented visually so that we see Dov’s very physical performance. We feel his sweat and his pain. We dislike him but cannot stop watching him. Ultimately, there may be some kind of redemption – for him and the Judge.

I read about 35% of the book, but then I decided to abandon it. The story, as far as I read it, did not catch me: I'm not a fan of stand up comedy, and the plot was quite boring and too slow.

I found this book rather a disturbing read, having expected it to resemble a stand-up routine - full of laughs and wit. It did in fact detail a stand-up routine by Dovaleh G, veteran performer, which rambled and ranged through the main events of his life specifically for his invited audience to include a former friend from his youth. It seems no myth that comedians are the least amusing and convivial of the population, as we are treated to his angst and reminiscences of his childhood and the agonising choices he has to make, which colour his whole life. It also shows us through the reactions of his audience a reflection of how he appears and sees himself, and we gradually discover the connections between his past and present. The book does indeed take us through a rather depressing and dated stand-up routine, but through it we see a deeper, more nuanced exploration of prejudice, abuse and misery, and the attempts made to overcome and come to terms with their effects.

This is a short but impactful novel .

The book gives you the feeling that you are at a stand up gig , some of the jokes land and there is an emotional heft .
The books structure may be its only flaw as the act continues the tone changes and it feels like a misstep although that is deliberate .

this is a good book that starts strong and whilst it finishes on a down beat note that is the authors choice .

Highly recommended

A fast paced read that will stay with you long after you've finished. Recommended.