Hope: A Tragedy, by Shalom Auslander

Imagine the kind of semi-suppressed snort that follows a really iconoclastic, sacrilegious joke. Hope: A Tragedy is comprised, one might say even dedicated, to that kind of laugh. Its sources for humour are things we are told are too serious to make fun of, and (thank gods) it does so with perfect pitch. It's easy to go down the 'everything is ripe for mockery, so I can say something offensive and you have to accept it' route with transgressive humour, but Hope manages to avoid that by being both ludicrous and a true tragedy in the classical mould. It doesn't end well, let's just say that.

A highly-strung Jewish man, Solomon Kugel, moves his family to the country to make a fresh start. His aged mother both refuses to die on schedule and also won't shut up about the concentration camps she 'lived' through, despite being born in America in 1946. And, in the attic of his new home, he finds a decrepit vagrant woman, who claims to be Holocaust survivor. Named Anne Frank.

This is all told so matter-of-factly that it's almost credible, which adds to the laughs. Auslander is perfectly fine embracing the stereotypes of Jewish humour if they add to the central farce ("The glutens, the glutens," says Kugel to passers-by in his best 'Adenoidal Hynkel' voice, while he desperately struggles to avoid defecating in an estate agent's garden). And the concept of 'survivors' in general and the Holocaust in particular are probed and splintered with both savagery and grace. What it means to to suffer, and what that suffering ought to grant you, is a central point. "I suffered," says Kugel's wife at one point. "I'm not a sufferer." It's about our tendency to glorify victims, and the consequences of that, with a good dollop of schadenfreude thrown in.

You'll breeze through this in a couple of days, tops. It's mostly dialogue, and interior dialogue at that. It's difficult to tell, therefore, how good a writer Auslander is. The sub-story, which is mostly Kugel's musing on famous last words, is well told but without much depth to it. This thing, this farce, this satire of a Jewish misery, this satire of the glorification of victimhood, is just about spot-on, but it's very self-contained. It's a short, funny, sharp book. Kugel is just about sympathetic and witty enough to  be likeable, and he's pathetic and miserable enough to laugh at mercilessly. I'm very interested to read Auslander's next work, just to see where it goes.

A good gift for anyone who prides themself on their sense of humour. Then see how they liked it.