The best books to make you laugh in a troubled world

Because it made me laugh out loud, for starters. Early in the pandemic, when I needed something to put a little color into my outlook, I encountered Niall Williams’s novel about the happenings in an Irish village in 1958. It is a coming-of-age novel, concerning one Noe Crowe, who comes to live with his grandparents at a time when their tiny and quite backward village is about to get electricity for the first time. The characters, including Noe’s grandparents and their mysterious boarder, Christy, as well as the other people of the town, are drawn beautifully, and young Noe’s misadventures with the three formidable Ford sisters (Yes, he is romantically inclined toward all three) are hilarious, as are so many other elements of this lovely book, not the least of which is Williams’s luminous writing. And now, it is one of my favorites.

First, because a novel should surprise us, and Less surprised me greatly. When I started reading this picaresque tale of a middle-aged gay man wandering as far as humanly possible to escape the sadness and embarrassment of his young lover marrying someone else, I knew only that it had won a Pulitzer and that there was some controversy over that. Having read Andrew Sean Greer’s funny and wildly imaginative novel, I believe I understand the problem: books that win a major literary prize are expected to be grim and “major.” They are hardly ever funny. I’m not sure how that jaundiced view of the literary arts came to be, but there it is. 

Less is a comic adventure novel – correction, a misadventure novel, for Arthur Less is well-meaning but naïve, an innocent in the workings of the world, and I kept wondering if his hapless blundering through his travels would land him in jail or an asylum. No chance, for the gods of humor are watching over Arthur Less, who improbably survives his lonely but frequently hilarious travels to come out in one piece. A book to make you cheer for the main character, and while you’re at it, for the author as well.  

How to describe the first book in The Thursday Murder Club series without sounding as if I’ve lost my grip? Well, one should learn something from a good book, and what we learn from any of the books in Richard Osman’s clever mystery series has to do with senior citizens. What Osman suggests to us is that we underestimate the elderly at our own peril, for the four main characters in these books are seniors – and smart, very funny, and at least one of them is dangerous – the residue of her previous employment as a British secret agent.

It is best to start with the first book, The Thursday Murder Club, where we meet a small group of residents of a quiet retirement community who get together every Thursday to discuss and solve a mystery. Their names are Joyce (more or less the chronicler of this saga of the septuagenarians), Elizabeth, the former MI5 operative, Ron, a former union leader, and Ibrahim, a not-quite-retired psychologist. The plot in these books is beside the point, for our feisty protagonists do solve a murder and attract new members to their small crew. Osman invites us to enjoy a book in which the lead characters are witty, clever, brave, and – yes – old. Old but far from finished.

Because it is, for lack of a better word, inspiring. I was inspired as a reader, and as a writer. Author Boyne has given us a book rich in character and event, a beautifully written account of the long life of a man constantly searching to learn who he is. Cyril Avery, the protagonist, is an orphan given up by his teenage mother in a small Irish town, later adopted but never quite certain of his true identity or the identity of his mother. The novel is also a portrait of Ireland over the second half of the twentieth century, warts and all. Though this is not a comic novel like my other choices, there is great wit in Boyne’s novel, and several comic scenes that really made me laugh (a scene in which the adolescent Cyril attempts to explain in confession his sexual fantasies to an aged and possibly senile priest is worth the price of the book). But throughout it all, we empathize with Cyril and root for him to find his place in the vast, complicated world he is born into.

Because I always learn something from Mary Roach’s books, and because they are relentlessly funny. 

This time out, with her usual investigative vigor, Mary delves into the Space Program and gives us a detailed look at what happens before, during, and after a space mission. We learn about training, experimentation, the rigors, and dangers of space travel, and the astronauts themselves, who, it turns out, aren’t always the stern-looking, no-nonsense types we’ve come to imagine. Apparently a sense of humor, even of the bizarre, is an uncited requirement for becoming an astronaut. You will learn things in this book that you probably never thought about (Ever wonder what might go wrong in a trip to the toilet at zero gravity?). And we find that some of the astronauts are legitimate practical jokers (on one voyage a skull keeps appearing in various places). And why not? Don’t they get bored?

Yes, they do, but you probably won’t be bored by Mary Roach.