Book Review: “Happy-Go-Lucky” by David Sedaris
Following David Sedaris’ writing career is like having a friend who you only get together with once every few years in a dive coffee shop, hashing out your recent lives over espresso and snark.
His essays read like those conversations, both because they’re largely autobiographical but also because they’re so intimately written. Sometimes the reader can almost feel the touch on their forearm and hear the hushed tone as something scandalously witty and off color is about to be said of someone else.
If you’ve wondered what your friend David has been up to during the past few years, then you’ll be happy to hear from him in his latest collection of essays, “Happy-Go-Lucky”.
Whether it’s the shadow of the Covid-19 pandemic, the coming to terms of his father’s advanced age and mortality, or his own transition into later middle age status, David is much darker than in his earlier works. That could already be seen in his previous opus, “Calypso” which punctured some tough family topics with searing honesty.
His new narrative is strikingly bleak; Our coffee shop tableau skews to black and white with only pops of color like a French art film.
This is not to say that the book isn’t jarringly funny. The unflattering pictures he paints of people are as acerbic and well-deserved as ever.
He describes one very rude hotel manager thusly, “A woman appeared – mid-forties, slightly disheveled, and angry. Her mouth was small and looked like a recently healed exit wound.”
Also his depiction of dealing with an underage, smitten Pepe le Pew acting teenager demands its own Yakety Sax soundtrack.
On another page when the shops around him are running out of toilet paper and toilet paper alternatives at the onset of the pandemic: “I remember looking long and hard at the coffee filters, thinking, Too Soon?”
If you are a longtime fan of David Sedaris or if you are only just hearing of his work, “Happy-Go-Lucky” is a wealth of neurotic, glib, sarcastic, dismissive, permissive, sacrosanct, and naughty stories that awaits your time.
So grab a copy from your local library and have a seat at your favorite coffee shop while David recounts what he’s been up to for the last few years of his amazing life.
Or save money and check Happy-Go-Lucky out at BPL and JCLC library locations by clicking here p
Other books by the author include: “Barrel Fever”, “Naked”, “Me Talk Pretty One Day”, “When You Are Engulfed in Flames”, “Calypso”, and more.
By Michael Coe| Library Assistant, III, North Birmingham/Inglenook Library
Comments