Anyone that has read NAKED and BARREL FEVER, or heard David Sedaris speaking live or on the radio will tell you that a new collection from him is cause for jubilation. His recent move to Paris from New York inspired these hilarious new pieces, including 'Me Talk Pretty One Day', about his attempts to learn French from a sadistic teacher who declares that 'every day spent with you is like having a caesarean section'. His family is another inspiration. 'You Can't Kill the Rooster' is a portrait of his brother, who talks incessant hip-hop slang to his bewildered father. And no one hones a finer fury in response to such modern annoyances as restaurant meals presented in ludicrous towers of food and cashiers with six-inch fingernails.
David Sedaris became a star autobiographer on public radio, onstage in New York, and on bestseller lists, mostly on the strength of "SantaLand Diaries," a scathing, hilarious account of his stint as a Christmas elf at Macy's. (It's in two separate collections, both worth owning, Barrel Fever and the Christmas-themed Holidays on Ice.) Sedaris's caustic gift has not deserted him in his fourth book, which mines poignant comedy from his peculiar childhood in North Carolina, his bizarre career path, and his move with his lover to France. Though his anarchic inclination to digress is his glory, Sedaris does have a theme in these reminiscences: the inability of humans to communicate. The title is his rendition in transliterated English of how he and his fellow students of French in Paris mangle the Gallic language. In the essay "Jesus Shaves," he and his classmates from many nations try to convey the concept of Easter to a Moroccan Muslim. "It is a party for the little boy of God," says one. "Then he be die one day on two... morsels of... lumber," says another. Sedaris muses on the disputes between his Protestant mother and his father, a Greek Orthodox guy whose Easter fell on a different day. Other essays explicate his deep kinship with his eccentric mom and absurd alienation from his IBM-exec dad: "To me, the greatest mystery of science continues to be that a man could father six children who shared absolutely none of his interests."

Every glimpse we get of Sedaris's family and acquaintances delivers laughs and insights. He thwarts his North Carolina speech therapist ("for whom the word pen had two syllables") by cleverly avoiding all words with s sounds, which reveal the lisp she sought to correct. His midget guitar teacher, Mister Mancini, is unaware that Sedaris doesn't share his obsession with breasts, and sings "Light My Fire" all wrong--"as if he were a Webelo scout demanding a match." As a remarkably unqualified teacher at the Art Institute of Chicago, Sedaris had his class watch soap operas and assign "guessays" on what would happen in the next day's episode.

It all adds up to the most distinctively skewed autobiography since Spalding Gray's Swimming to Cambodia. The only possible reason not to read this book is if you'd rather hear the author's intrinsically funny speaking voice narrating his story. In that case, get Me Talk Pretty One Day on audio. --Tim Appelo

Customer Rating:
Summary: Best Sedaris collection!
Comment: This is Sedaris' best collection of short stories/memoirs/autobiographies. His writing is wonderful, in part because it's hard to separate fact from fiction. He has a true gift for writing. My favorite story is the title one but all are great. These stories are great to read all at once or one at a time!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Do Not Read While Eating Because It's So Funny You Might Choke
Comment: When I opened this book I had limited time so I decided to look for the shortest essay in the book so I could sneak in a quick read. I selected "Big Boy" which started on page 97 and ended before the next essay that started on page 100. By the end of the first paragraph I was already laughing and saying, aloud, "oh geeze". I laughed through all three pages and found myself incredibly impressed with his writing, his insightful observations, and how he captures (through nothing but words) an experience worth sharing with the reader.

When my husband came home from work, I placed the "Big Boy" essage in front of him and said, "you have to read this". Same thing happened. By the end of the first paragraph he had a huge smile and was snickering quietly.

I will never look at a burrito the same way.

This book is a keeper.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: David Sedaris does it again!
Comment: I think I have now read or listened to all of David Sedaris' books or audiobooks. I prefer the audiobooks as he tells it the way he writes it. Just sit back and enjoy. No one tells a story like David Sedaris. You'll laugh til you cry.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Not as funny as I'd hoped.
Comment: Sedaris describes vignettes from his life in this wry-humored self-deprecating autobiography.

He and I do not share the same sense of humor, so though I did find some of his stories throughout the middle of the text quite funny (particularly the way he described learning French and moving to France), I found the beginning and end of the book tedious reading. Perhaps I didn't read it in the right frame of mind. If I had approached it as a collection of short stories instead of a continuing narrative, I might have enjoyed it better, and I am willing to take the blame for that oversight, though I didn't see any reference to this book as a collection of short stories in any reviews.

In the beginning, Sedaris describes himself as a vapid and shallow child, and a pretentious and annoying art student. As a reader, I simply didn't care about him.

If you can stick with this novel until chapter nine, when Sedaris moves to NYC, his humor kicks into gear and the book becomes very amusing through chapter twenty-three.

After that, subsequent chapters about uncomfortable self-revelations and insomniac fantasies are at times both repulsive and tedious, and divorced from any of the previous text. But then Sedaris finishes with one of the funniest chapters of the whole lot which leaves the reader laughing, but does nothing to draw the whole book together in conclusion.

Many people have loved this book, but I did not find it very appealing or satisfying.

C.A.Wulff - author of Born Without a Tail

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Not heartwarming... in a good way.
Comment: Before reading this book, I very much thought from the title (and because at the time I did not know who David Sedaris is)that it would be a "heart wrenching tale" about some child who is physically unable to speak or doesn't have access to a decent education. It was one of those books I meant to get to someday, but probably never would. Finally someone clued me in. I read it in a day.
Sedaris's short stories are the funniest I've ever read. He draws on recollections of his own family to give us realistic visions of family and personal life in all their "rolling on the floor laughing" complexity. If I were ever to write a book, this is exactly like what I hope I would write.

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