Dress Your Family In Corduroy And Denim

A deadpan, darkly comical portrait of the American underbelly . . . Sedaris shares something of [Alan] Bennett's detached curiosity, and they both have a thirst for amusement

Mail on Sunday

David Sedaris spins both banalities (children playing in snow) and bizarreries (an erotic vacuuming service) into perfectly tuned comic essays

Daily Telegraph

He has taken out some walls in his head, rearranged his mental furniture, and thrown open the property to the public as the house of mirth... Did I also say that it's roll-on-the-floor funny?

The Times

Sedaris is a man of many surprises, with an unusual and inspiring store cupboard of stories and anecdotes that range from his childhood misdemeanours to his job as a cleaner. This latest book is a masterpiece . . . Not only does he possess a cracking sense of humour and literary style, but he excels as the butt of his own jokes. This is a man who could capture your heart and lift your spirits while reading out the ingredients of a rice cake

Observer

A charming, humorous book . . . These are scenes of family life at its best, written with clarity but also with great affection, through which the character of the author emerges, watchful, self-mocking and full of understanding

Times Literary Supplement

If you haven't come across David Sedaris, get in quick before over-exposure sucks him dry

Guardian

Some of the most uproariously acerbic self-analyses you will ever read . . . as funny as ever, but there's also a new note, a touching, even moving element, which takes it beyond comedy into a wry and revealing personal history. It's his best, funniest, most satisfying book . . . he describes his relationship with Hugh with a beauty that takes your breath away. But most of it you'll read because it's very, very funny

Time Out

Mr Sedaris is one of the funniest writers alive . . . Dress Your Family in Corduroy & Denim retains the perfect comic timing of Mr Sedaris's earlier work, but its tone has a more rounded feel. Though the pace may not be so pert, the curves sit well . . . Sedaris's humour is dry, witty and consistently successful. Predictable and obvious it is not

The Economist

Sedaris's prose style is so beautifully translucent that you don't even notice that it is a style. Here he gives us a series of vignettes of ordinary life in suburban America, adding up to an autobiography of sorts, and demonstrating the old truism that there is no such thing as ordinary life. Sedaris writes with a gentle but unfailing acuity and a keen eye for the ridiculous, which underlines pretty well everything human beings say and do . . . Sedaris is like an updated Thurber: domestic, laconic, slightly warped but never bitter, and extremely funny

Culture

If you need a tonic, an utterly absorbing and funny read where characters are just that little bit more oddball than necessary, then Sedaris's strange tales of trying to come out as a gay teenager amid crazy parents, dysfunctional neighbours and sinister friends, should be just the thing. It is rare that a book causes the reader to laugh out loud, but Sedaris manages it in nearly every chapter in this collection of humorous essays about his friends and family

Herald

For many writers such self-absorption produces the literary equivalent of bellybutton fluff. Sedaris is a rare exception, and seems to extricate small nuggets of comedy gold from that part of his anatomy . . . This is one book that cannot fail to hit that elusive spot which provokes uncontrolled laughter

The List

Self-deprecation is Sedaris's stock in trade, reality literature his speciality, and once again his family life and early adulthood are the subject in this latest collection of comic autobiographical pieces

Metro

American humorist Sedaris makes me laugh as much as any writer living today . . . No one renders the pathos, chaos, and impossible variety of daily encounters like Sedaris, who can be brutally honest, hilarious and affectionate about any subject

Belfast Telegraph

Through quick, sharp, no-frills writing, Sedaris shines a spotlight into the nooks and crannies of his memory, by turns revealing events, thoughts and feelings that are obscure, yet somehow oddly universal

Irish Sunday Business Post

Fans of American humorist David Sedaris won't be disappointed by his excellent new book . . . his witty deadpan style makes each essay a joy. Whether writing about the horrible child next door whose obnoxiousness eventually forces him to move apartment, or telling of his family's thwarted plans to buy a beach house, Sedaris is always smart, hilarious and strangely touching

Image

[Sedaris] is a sharp, acid-tongued observer of the foibles of human nature, and with this latest collection of short essays, he delves into the seemingly mundane corners of everyday life and comes up with comic gold

Irish Evening Herald

Literary tongues are wagging in anticipation of David Sedaris's new book . . . His skewed view points of life are hilariously offbeat, and his commentaries on New Yorkers, Southerners or any other ethnic or regional folk are side-splittingly accurate

Gay Times

While other comic writers punt toward the punchline like a dog chasing a ball, he glides through stories from his Greek-American North Carolina upbringing and recent spell in Paris with the grace and poignancy of a metropolitan Garrison Keillor, or Raymond Carver with jokes . . . Funny is one thing but Sedaris is now just as adept at sad, and the messy, melancholy hinterland between the two

Word

These are scenes of family life at its best, written with clarity but also with great affection, through which the character of the author emerges, watchful, self-mocking and full of understanding.

TLS

This is a man who could capture your heart and lift your spirits while reading out the ingredients of a rice cake. OBSERVER

'Mr Sedaris's humour is dry, witty and consistently successful.’

ECONOMIST

'Sedaris is like an updated Thurber: domestic, laconic, slightly warped but never bitter, and extremely funny.’

CULTURE, SUNDAY TIMES

'His best, funniest, most satisfying book.’