He can also be just plain hilarious, as in “Jesus Shaves,” about a discussion of cultural differences using the limited vocabulary available to students in a beginner French class (“The rabbit of Easter. Sedaris can take even the most serious subject-such as his sister Tiffany’s suicide-and evoke both empathy and laughter.

Whether searching for the perfect Paris apartment with his partner, Hugh, recalling long-ago family vacations, or describing his sister Amy’s freaky encounter with a psychic, Sedaris finds ample fodder for his keen satiric sense in his life and the lives of those around him. Culled from his previously published volumes and magazine pieces, this work focuses on the dynamics among the six Sedaris siblings and their parents (“I might reinvent myself to strangers, but to this day, as far as my family is concerned, I’m still the one most likely to set your house on fire,” he admits). Spans a career spent watching and learning and laughing-quite often at himself-and invites readers deep into the world of one of the most brilliant and original writers of our time.Sedaris’s brilliant knack for observational humor is on full display in this terrific retrospective essay collection (after Calypso). No experience, he sees, is quite as he expected-it's often harder, more fraught, and certainly weirder-but sometimes it is also much richer and more wonderful.įull of joy, generosity, and the incisive humor that has led David Sedaris to be called 'the funniest man alive' ( Reveal the wonder and delight Sedaris takes in the surprises life brings him. In these pages, Sedaris explores falling in love and staying together, recognizing his own aging not in the mirror but in the faces of his siblings, losing one parent and coming to terms-at long last-with the other. Nowhere is this clearer than in his writing about his loved ones. He drowns a mouse in a bucket, struggles to say 'give it to me' in five languages, and hand-feeds a carnivorous bird.īut if all you expect to find in Sedaris's work is the deft and sharply observed comedy for which he became renowned, you may be surprised to discover that his words bring more warmth than mockery, more fellow-feeling than derision. In these stories, Sedaris shops for rare taxidermy, hitchhikes with a lady quadriplegic, and spits a lozenge into a fellow traveler's lap. Now, for the first time collected in one volume, the author brings us his funniest and most memorable work. And it is almost impossible to read without laughing. It opens our eyes to what is at absurd and moving about our daily existence.

A Sedaris story may seem confessional, but is also highly attuned to the world outside. You must readįor more than twenty-five years, David Sedaris has been carving out a unique literary space, virtually creating his own genre.

The best of me sedaris review