diff --git a/Test/Tasty/Ingredients/ConsoleReporter.hs b/Test/Tasty/Ingredients/ConsoleReporter.hs
--- a/Test/Tasty/Ingredients/ConsoleReporter.hs
+++ b/Test/Tasty/Ingredients/ConsoleReporter.hs
@@ -6,6 +6,8 @@
 import Control.Monad.State hiding (fail)
 import Control.Concurrent.STM
 import Control.Exception
+import Control.DeepSeq
+import Control.Applicative
 import Test.Tasty.Core
 import Test.Tasty.Run
 import Test.Tasty.Ingredients
@@ -124,6 +126,8 @@
             Exception e -> return (False, "Exception: " ++ show e)
             _ -> retry
 
+      rDesc <- liftIO $ formatMessage rDesc
+
       liftIO $
         if rOk
           then ok "OK\n"
@@ -169,6 +173,23 @@
     fs -> do
       fail $ printf "%d out of %d tests failed\n" fs (ix st)
       return False
+
+
+-- | Printing exceptions or other messages is tricky — in the process we
+-- can get new exceptions!
+--
+-- See e.g. https://github.com/feuerbach/tasty/issues/25
+formatMessage :: String -> IO String
+formatMessage msg = go 3 msg
+  where
+    -- to avoid infinite recursion, we introduce the recursion limit
+    go :: Int -> String -> IO String
+    go 0        _ = return "exceptions keep throwing other exceptions!"
+    go recLimit msg = do
+      mbStr <- try $ evaluate $ force msg
+      case mbStr of
+        Right str -> return str
+        Left e' -> printf "message threw an exception: %s" <$> go (recLimit-1) (show (e' :: SomeException))
 
 -- (Potentially) colorful output
 ok, fail, infoOk, infoFail :: (?colors :: Bool) => String -> IO ()
diff --git a/tasty.cabal b/tasty.cabal
--- a/tasty.cabal
+++ b/tasty.cabal
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 --  see http://haskell.org/cabal/users-guide/
 
 name:                tasty
-version:             0.4
+version:             0.4.0.1
 synopsis:            Modern and extensible testing framework
 description:         See <http://documentup.com/feuerbach/tasty>
 license:             MIT
@@ -46,7 +46,8 @@
     mtl,
     tagged >= 0.5,
     regex-posix,
-    optparse-applicative >= 0.6
+    optparse-applicative >= 0.6,
+    deepseq >= 1.3
 
   if flag(colors)
     build-depends: ansi-terminal