When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of When You Are Engulfed in Flames
Book Review: Not His Best
Summary: 3 Stars
Normally I love David Sedaris and can't wait for his books to come out, but this one was a disappointment. It's very dark and moody and it took me forever to finish it. Not his best work.Book Review: Not my style...
Summary: 3 Stars
David Sedaris
Little Brown and Co., 2008
ISBN: 9780316143479
3 Stars
Not my style...
David Sedaris style is understated humor. When Your Are Engulfed In Flames is a collection of his short stories and essays. I have not read any of Mr. Sedaris' previous books. I did find a few humorous moments, but nothing that made me laugh aloud or even brought a little chuckle. However, that does not make Sedaris a bad writer; it makes his style not my style.
Book Review: not as funny as "Naked"
Summary: 4 Stars
I liked this book. It was funny & clever, especially the author's struggle to quit smoking. I suggest you also buy the author's best work, "Naked".Book Review: Funny, Interesting
Summary: 4 Stars
I did enjoy most of the essays. Some of my favorites involved a bad babysitter who fools the adults, but not the kids (the Understudy); a raspy-voiced next door neighbor named Helen (That's Amore); an annoyed wife on an airplane flight (Solution to Saturdays Puzzle); and an invented talking skeleton (Memento Mori); to name just a few.
To any fan of David Sedaris' essays this is a treat. It is so nice to have them available in one place.
Book Review: Great memoir
Summary: 5 Stars
Older, wiser, smarter and meaner, Sedaris (Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, 2004, etc.) defies the odds once again by delivering an intelligent take on the banalities of an absurd life. The author's faithful fans probably won't be turned off by his copyright-page admission that these pieces, most seen before in the New Yorker, are only "realish." They feel real, whether Sedaris is revealing his troubling obsession with a certain species of spider or describing a lift from a tow-truck driver who kept saying things like, "yes, indeedy, a little oral give-and-take would feel pretty good right about now"-the ring of truth adds to the book's horrified-laughter factor. The author still draws from the well of familial tragicomedy in pieces that dissect his parents' taste in modern art ("Adult Figures Charging Toward a Concrete Toadstool") and their reactions to what he wrote about them in his first book ("fifty pages later, they were boarding up the door and looking for ways to disguise themselves"). Most of the essays, however, chronicle expatriate life in England, France and Japan with his long-suffering and improbably talented boyfriend Hugh. Sedaris positions himself as a hapless Bertie Wooster to Hugh's Jeeves, lazily allowing his partner's mother to clean their apartment ("I just sit in a rocker, raising my feet every now and then so she can pass the vacuum") and marveling at Hugh's interest in, well, doing things. A highpoint is "All the Beauty You Will Ever Need," which starts as a rant about his boyfriend's ludicrous self-sufficiency ("Hugh beats underpants against river rocks or decides that it might be fun to grind his own flour") but twists into a sharp declaration of lovethat's all the more touching for its lack of sentimentality. Just when Sedaris seems to have disappeared down the rabbit hole of ironic introspection, he delivers a cracking blow of insight that leaves you reeling.
Also highly recommended is Dry: A Memoir by Augusten Burroughs.