Calypso - David Sedaris

I should start out by saying that I love David Sedaris. I've seen him read live and I'm going again in April because it's not just what he says, but how he says it that makes him so funny. I first became acquainted with him through NPR's This American Life. I've picked up his books here and there but I honestly can't say if I read a story in a collection, heard it on TAM, watched in a dramatized version of Santaland Diaries, or heard it live in an author talk with the man himself.

In any case, Calypso presents the best of David Sedaris. He presents both the good and the bad - the neurotic-ism with the whimsy. He gives you the right balance and blend of both the tragic and the mundane and finds humor in places that are dark. Calypso deals a lot with his sister Tiffany's suicide and the family's aftermath. I had somehow missed the news about her death which it first happened several years ago so when I read about it in the opening story, I thought, "oh-no, the sister with the rickshaw." And somehow I think David Sedaris would be okay with this memory that he gave me of Tiffany and a rick-shaw.

But as funny as David Sedaris is, he doesn't pull any punches on getting real on the dark stuff. As in when he casually reveals in one story about his last time seeing his sister before she took her own life. So somehow, instead of diminishing the humor in the book, it actually makes the humor feel more earned.

Ready David Sedaris is really like curling up on the couch with a glass of wine and an old friend and saying, "So tell me what's been going on with you?"

4/5 Stars.