A Horse Walks into a Bar

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017

The setting is a comedy club in a small Israeli town. An audience that has come expecting an evening of amusement instead sees a comedian falling apart on stage; an act of disintegration, a man crumbling, as a matter of choice, before their eyes. They could get up and leave, or boo and whistle and drive him from the stage, if they were not so drawn to glimpse his personal hell. Dovaleh G, a veteran stand-up comic - charming, erratic, repellent - exposes a wound he has been living with for years- a fateful and gruesome choice he had to make between the two people who were dearest to him.

A Horse Walks into a Bar is a shocking and breathtaking read. Betrayals between lovers, the treachery of friends, guilt demanding redress. Flaying alive both himself and the people watching him, Dovaleh G provokes both revulsion and empathy from an audience that doesn't know whether to laugh or cry - and all this in the presence of a former childhood friend who is trying to understand why he's been summoned to this performance.

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Library Journal Review

One night at an Israeli comedy club, Dov Greenstein's performance of off-color and not very funny jokes turns into a poignant memoir of his miserable childhood. He has asked Avishai Lazar, a childhood acquaintance, to attend the performance. Dov and Avi had attended military youth camp, though Dov was abruptly removed to attend his mother's funeral. Joe Barrett does an adequate job reading the book, but he doesn't vary his voice enough, which makes it difficult to differentiate between Dov's performance and Avi's inner voice. Verdict Even though Barrett's interpretation is a little difficult to understand, this is highly recommended for the foreign and Jewish-themed collections of all libraries. ["Grossman brings real humanity to this heart-wrenching and well-written novel": LJ 9/15/16 starred review of the Knopf hc.]-Ilka Gordon, Beachwood, OH © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.