Wrecking Balls - J. Giambrone

Synopsis:

Charleston and Gary are on the verge of comic greatness: broke, wasted, and floundering through life. As Charleston turns 30 he faces an existential crisis. His comedy career in the gutter, he considers leaving the life. That is until Gary pilfers one of his joke ideas. Then it's comedy Jihad to the death, and there can be only one.


Review:

This book was a book of which I had alot of expectations for, mostly down to hoping the jokes within were going to have an affect on me.

So Gary and Charleston have shared the same dream since they were kids growing up together, to become top notch comedians with fans and the spotlight on them. They tumble through life doing gigs here and there as many as they can, finding nothing much like the success that they want. Out of the blue Gary steals one of Charlestons jokes from his line up so naturally they both having a fall out which consists of jokes gone awry and vengeful videos online, each of them trying to outdo the other and let me say its crazy.

The stand up parts of this book were actually funny, so much so I had a good hearty laugh even though they push the limits of being acceptable. Through the stand up parts of the book Giambrone highlights how sensitive America is, and not essentially just America but almost every other place on the earth. With each stand up moment there is also a great insight of how the whole thing actually works which makes it even more enjoyable to read. 

I have to be honest when I'm writing these reviews, I don't like to write of negative things but this one isn't negative as such, it was more of a complication I faced. When I first begun reading the book it took me a couple of chapters to really get into the book as I found it hard to gain some sort of understanding of what was going on but I was able to catch on not too late into the book. I really loved Gary and Charleston, I think they would look great on stage in a small run down bar.

I love how Giambrone was able to write 3 different comedians in this book and managed to give each of them all their own different audience and view on the world and the issues going on. They all stood out as individuals on the stage, and I feel like  making that happen is hard to do. I was really impressed by Giambrone' ability to do so much with 3 completely different characters within a story. Some of the jokes throughout the book had me laughing hard, it was quite nice to be able to laugh at certain of the jokes. I'm giving it a 4/ 5 , that's really not the books fault really because I didn't laugh at all of the jokes and I felt if I did I'd have given it a 5/5 but I wasn't laughing all the way through even though I thoroughly enjoyed the whole story and some of the jokes. If you're into comedy then this is definitely a book for you.