Reviews

The Jokes by Stephen Thomas

dessa's review against another edition

Go to review page

4.0

What a strangely intriguing little collection. Every page reads like the complicated set-up for a joke, but lacking the final punchline. I worried at my favourite ones like a kid with a tooth-ache, trying to figure out how the details might all come together in a laugh. What is this saying about life? About literature? About humour? My head hurts. Read this book.

Reread December 2020: flipping through this to assign stories to my class next semester, I accidentally read the whole book. It’s darker than I remember, but somehow lighter, too, like the line between laughing and crying.
More...