The Chicago Stand-Up program has enrolled young comedians for nearly a decade. Artie may be too handsome for standup, Olivia too reluctant to examine her own life, and Phil too afraid to cause harm. Kruger may be too vanilla to command his students' respect, Ashbee too detached. And then we have Dorothy – the only woman on the program's faculty – who can't tell whether she's too abiding, too ambitious, or too ambivalent. Whether a visiting professor – the high-profile, controversy-steeped comedian, Manny Reinhardt – will do more to help or harm their cause remains to be seen. But he's on his way. He'll be arriving sooner than anyone thinks.
Brimming with insecure characters, clever repartee, dark jokes and funny riffs ... A couple of subplots involve guns that, like some of the comedy routines, never detonate. But there’s also plenty of clever material, not just in the half-baked "bits," but in discussions about what subjects are off-limits, and whether emotion is the enemy of comedy.
Riffy, funny, whip-smart ... Bordas wittily constructs her narrative out of minor encounters, incidents, riffs, meditations ... What makes the book work, first and foremost, is that it’s funny ... But beneath the laughs and digressions lies a surprisingly profound book about the costs and consolations of art.
Clever ... A subplot involving reports of an active shooter on campus feels unnecessary; more successful are Bordas’s explorations of what a stand-up routine requires of its writer and what, if anything, is off-limits ... Occasional moments of broad comedy, like an embarrassing bathroom scene, spice up the observational humor incorporated throughout. It’s a knockout.