David Sedaris’s new collection will thrill fans and non-fans alike.Open any David Sedaris book and you know what you’re going to get: off beat observations, wacky overheard dialogue, briskly drawn portraits and plenty of Sedaris’s trademark wit. So with a new David Sedaris book, there’s minimal chance of disappointment.
In this new collection of sketches and essays, Sedaris concentrates mostly on his family – especially his sisters, with whom he seems to get along best. His father, now approaching his mid-nineties, also makes plenty of appearances. Deceased family members - his mother, who died thirty years ago, and his youngest sister, Tiffany, who committed suicide - also preoccupy a lot of Sedaris’s writing. Besides the family portraits, there are essays on politics, the mangling of the English language and the favourite expressions of angry car drivers.
Overall, the tone of the book is a kind of meditation on middle age, mixed with a gallows humour on the looming indignities of old age. There’s not a whole lot to look forward to, so you may as well laugh.
I finished Calypso in two days. It was so addictive I couldn’t stop reading. And I laughed out loud several times. Sedaris holds a mirror up to his life, warts and all, and it’s still a cathartic experience to live vicariously through his joys, anxieties and day-to-day struggles.
Calypso, by David Sedaris. Published by Little, Brown. RRP: $29.99
Review by Chris Saliba
No comments:
Post a Comment