โGeniusโฆ It is miraculous to read these piecesโฆ You must read The Best of Me.โ โAndrew Sean Greer, New York Times Book Review
Aย New York Times Book Review Editorsโ Choice
A CNN andย Christian Science Monitorย Best Book of the Month
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.
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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 travelerโs lap. He drowns a mouse in a bucket, struggles to say โgive it to meโ in five languages, and hand-feeds a carnivorous bird.
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But if all you expect to find in Sedarisโs 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 termsโat long lastโwith the other.
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Taken together, the stories in TheBest of Me reveal the wonder and delight Sedaris takes in the surprises life brings him. No experience, he sees, is quite as he expectedโitโs often harder, more fraught, and certainly weirderโbut sometimes it is also much richer and more wonderful.
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Full of joy, generosity, and the incisive humor that has led David Sedaris to be called โthe funniest man aliveโ (Time Out New York), The Best of Me spans a career spent watching and learning and laughingโquite often at himselfโand invites readers deep into the world of one of the most brilliant and original writers of our time.