Book Review : A Horse Walks into a Bar by David Grossman

'A Horse Walks into a Bar', I finally picked this book up after reading a lot about the accolades the book had received including 'The International Man Booker Prize'. I did mention about my apprehensions of Booker Prize Winning books in one of my previous posts and had also mentioned about how I finally overcame it with 'The White Tiger'. So, when I came across this book, what caught my sight was its minimalistic and beautiful cover and it's weird title. A bit of a research on Google helped me uncover the mystery behind the title.

Coming back to the book, the book revolves around two protagonists Avishai Lazar and Dovaleh Greenstein. Avishai, a retired judge recieves a phone call from Greenstein who asks him to attend one of his stand-up shows and judge him. Avishai keeps wondering, why he has been called to the show as they haven't been in touch with each other since childhood. They had known each other for quite a brief period which intrigued Avishai even more. The entire plot revolves around Dovaleh's stand up act which keeps shuffling from a comedy to a personal tragedy. The timeline of the entire book is just 2 hours which is quite interesting to read and one needs to be quite patient to understand the gist of the story while reading.

The best part about the book is the way the flow of the book keeps shifting from Comedy to Tragedy to Flashback. One could easily relate to this book as the book progresses and how various readers would react to the book. A bit of Spoilers ahead and I would request the readers to read it purely at their discretion. So, as the book keeps progressing, we see a lot of audience starts moving out of the auditorium and only the ones that stays till the end realises the actual essence of the book. It is quite similar to the readers reading the book. If one is quite impatient, he/she would put down the book without completing it and would blame the author/themselves for investing time and money on it whereas the readers who reaches the end would surely relish their invested time on the book. A good book is the one which stays with you even after you have completed the book and this book does its job too well. The characters, the plot, the setting stays with you and even though the book is situated in a single room setting, it does takes your imagination to a lot of places.

Finding out faults with this book is quite difficult as the book has more highs than lows from start to end. The language is quite simple to grasp and I found this quite late that it was a translation book and not a book written in English. The book gave me sleepless nights as it compelled me even during my sick period. The book doesn't have an actual theme and hence I just could not put it in a certain genre. Also, one must keep track of the names of the places and at a lot of point, I had to google and it turned out that the places were not set in any fictional land.

So, my final verdict, do pick up this book and read it till the end. Its hardly a 300 page book that can be finished in 2-3 sittings but I would surely ask you to have some patience and do finish the book. The book ain't a drag nor would disappoint you and a well deserved winner for the "International
Man Booker Prize".

Ratings - 🌟🌟🌟🌟1/2 out of 5