FINISHED READING - A Carnival of Snackery

Anyone who has read, or heard David Sedaris on the radio, will recognise the tone of voice through out these diary extracts from 2003- 2020. Flippant, witty, acerbic and cutting, very humorous dismissals of his own and other people's foibles. This time it's polished into a story, but drawn from his day to day experience. You can see he is always on the look out for comic treasure. And boy does this guy travel promoting his books, doing public readings world wide. His air miles must be super impressive.

July 2, 2017

My favourite person at last night's signing was a fifty year old man who lives with his mother.

"What do you do for a living?" I asked

"Well," he said," I'm mentally ill. And that keeps me pretty busy."

As a book its brilliant bedtime reading. Short diary entries you can pick up and put down the moment slumber descends upon you. Confident you have no narrative thread to lose track of. Sedaris is frank to a fault, about a lot that happens during this period. The suicide of his sister Tiffany, the health and mental decline of his Dad, with whom he has an abrasive love / hate relationship. The touchy tone of his love for his husband Hugh, whose always trying to restrain or save Sedaris from the worst consequences of his character and humour.

May 6, 2013

A joke from last night's book signing.

A woman goes to her gynecologist, who settles her in and begins his exam, saying "You've got the biggest vagina I've ever seen in my life. You've got the biggest vagina I've ever seen in my life."

"You don't have to say it twice," the woman scolds."

And her doctor says, "I didn't."

Sedaris is out of sync with where the world is at. Hence his ability to lampoon it so precisely. An inveterate collector, not just of other people's trash from around his home in Sussex, but also, truly far from PC jokes he asks his audience for, strange phrases that are not self explanatory, such as the books title' a carnival of snackery', and the requests he gets at book signings, which he gleefully does his very worst with.

April 11,2013

"I want you to inscribe something shocking and offensive to my mother," said a nineteen- year-old at last night's book signing. He passed me a copy of When You Are Engulfed in Flames, and after thinking it over for a moment, I picked up my pen. Dear Mary Lou, I wrote. Your son Jesse left teeth marks on my dick.

I handed it back and realised by the look on his face that by shocking and offensive he'd meant "lightly disturbing."

In short it's a delight to read from start to finish. Often laugh out loud, or convulsive guffaw inducing, so careful if you're reading it in a public space.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8