Collected short pieces from the unique voice of Sedaris, a
few of which I read previously in the New
Yorker. Unlike his earlier work, not
many of these are laugh-out-loud-funny.
Although his life has never been an easy or pain-free one, and much of
his writing has an edge, there is a new darkness in this book. He writes about his mother’s early death from
alcoholism, and her dual personae of beloved mom and embarrassing horror show; about
his sister Tiffany’s suicide at 50, after a disturbed and disturbing life
quasi-homeless; and more than one story hinges on just plain being gross. I miss the “me talk pretty one day” Sedaris,
but a there’s been a lot of water under the bridge in the intervening seventeen years and that
water contains a monstrous snapping turtle with a cancerous growth on its head. 259 pp.
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