Andrew Sean Greer argues that comic novels are difficult to define but are distinguished by an author’s decision to treat painful, serious or absurd experiences as funny. He suggests that humour can reveal the same truths about love, grief, death and human behaviour as tragedy, while making difficult realities more bearable for readers.

Drawing on his pandemic reading, Greer says he turned from Agatha Christie’s dependable plots to comic fiction as a response to continuing uncertainty. He cites writers including PG Wodehouse, Herman Melville and Vladimir Nabokov, and describes writing comedy as a two-stage process: first understanding characters’ hardships realistically, then finding a comic perspective without denying their seriousness.