I have heard that stand-up comedians bring their pain to the stage and the audience laughs at it because while they can relate to what is being said, it is funny because it isn’t them experiencing it and the comic presents the pain in a comedic story telling fashion as if he or she is viewing the situation from above and relating it even though it is themselves they are speaking of. David Grossman has certainly captured the feel and delivers the scene for the reader of actually being in a comedy club. From beginning to end you have such an indelible sense of the horror that was Dovelah Greenstein’s life, yet, he breaks up the haunting visuals he creates in your head with a zinger joke or critical observation of someone in the audience just to bring up the deep downturn he has taken the reader on. This is not a happy book but more of a purging of one’s demons. Well done, well thought out but it will take the reader on a spiraling trip through Dovelah Greenstein’s past almost like watching someone self-destruct before your eyes. My first thought was ‘he is having a nervous breakdown on stage’ but dear reader it is far more than that. I won’t divulge what is really happening here but though the book is fiction, the character is fiction and the plot is fiction, David Grossman captures the pain experienced so realistically it is tangible. A haunting book. Both an intellectual and emotional ride that I would liken to (Franz) Kafka.
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