For more than twenty-five years David Sedaris has been carving out a unique literary space
virtually creating his own genre. A Sedaris story may seem confessional but is also highly
attuned to the world outside. It opens our eyes to what is at absurd and moving about our daily
existence. And it is almost impossible to read without laughing. Now for the first time
collected in one volume the author brings us his funniest and most memorable work. In these
stories Sedaris shops for rare taxidermy hitchhikes with a lady quadriplegic and spits a
lozenge into a fellow traveler's lap. He drowns a mouse in a bucket struggles to say 'give it
to me' in five languages and hand-feeds a carnivorous bird. But 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. Nowhere is this clearer than in his writing about his loved ones. 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. Taken together the stories in The Best of Me reveal the wonder and delight
Sedaris takes in the surprises life brings him. 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. Full of joy generosity and the incisive humor that has led David Sedaris
to be called 'the funniest man alive' (Time Out New York) The Best of Me 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.
