Dov is an angry man blazing with scorn. So why did he become a comedian? And why has he invited, to his performance in a small, grotty bar in Netanya, a school acquaintance who also happens to have grown up to become a judge? And why, instead of giving his audience a show of stand-up comedy, does he begin to tell them the grimmest version of his unremittingly grim life story? And why on earth does he not stop when they begin to walk out?
There are no easy answers. Dov is Dov because of a remarkably complex line of people, actions (and non-actions), and events, which all begin in his childhood, when his holocaust-traumatised mother was unable to raise so much as a smile or a word for her child.
A Horse Walks into a Bar is not a pleasant read, but it is darkly, sinisterly pregnant with ‘what-ifs’ and near misses, and nearlys, barelys, and almosts. Dov and his life story are haunting: months after I first read the novel, I’m still thinking and worrying about him, and especially about the child he once was, and wondering what happened after I closed the cover of the book, which feels like it poured unhindered and almost without conscious thought from Grossman in one long sleepless fortnight of whiskey and regret.
To say I loved this book would be an understatement. I shrank from every word of it, and longed to put it down and never think of it, or Dov, again. But I had to know. Despite the grimness, and despite Dov’s wretched life and tortured soul, and despite the hopeless abyss that Dov keeps throwing himself into over and over again, I wanted to know more about the luckless comedian and the strange and subtle drama he has set up by inviting his former childhood friend to the worst and best performance of his life.
Grossman’s writing is brilliant, and whether you love or loathe the book (I did both, at the same time, and I still have cognitive dissonance from it), you will feel every dank and sweaty moment of Dov’s performance, and you will cringe and shudder with the audience as Dov goes too far over and over again. It is performance art of shock-jock calibre, with a much deeper, darker heart.
Book sourse: bought for myself
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