"People stare at their drinks, swirl their glasses of wine and peck distractedly at their little bowls of nuts and pretzels."
I
started reading this winner of the Man Booker International Prize 2017, in
September and finished in December. At a mere 208 pages long you can see it
took me AN AGE, because I found it tedious, annoying and just plain not worth
the effort. Perhaps something got lost in translation?
The
tired jokes, and sweaty grossness of the ageing stand-up comedian Dovaleh G,
really did not float this reader’s boat….. At all! I’m confounded that this got
such amazing reviews. Did I miss something? I was deeply uninterested in the
protagonist’s relationship to the comedian and the reasons for his summons to
the show. The stand-up routine was excruciating, the way it jumped back and
forth from bad jokes to recounting traumas and then back to paltry humour
again. I wanted out even more than the audience.
If
you know me, you’ll know I love to finish things. Job done, tick in a box.
Therefore, I had to muddle through and I did; ever optimistic that it would get
better. For me, it just didn’t.
1
out of 5 times I’d like a refund.
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