When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Being a ardent Sedaris fan, I was prepared to be delighted by Sedaris' latest book "When You're Engulfed in Flames"; I was expecting a satirical feat, a notable achievement as is his usual custom. What I got was a litany of aches, pains, ailments, and hypochondria of an aging man, getting older and sicker by the turning of every page, listing his illnesses, some real, some [perhaps] imaginary, from coughs, to cysts and boils, to gingivitis leading to gum surgery. This book was a major disappointment; it's definitely not a buy, may be a library check-out. Sorry David!

I laughed. Out loud. On an airplane reading this book. BTW... Also check out the interview he did with Jon Stewart about it. Hysterical.

"When You Are Engulfed in Flames" is David Sedaris' fifth full-length collection of humorous essays. I've long been a fan of his writing, which for the uninitiated tends to focus on the more skewed aspects of his family and life. His collections usually include a variety of stories from various epochs of his life - as a child and teenager with his hilarious family, in his twenties (when he did drugs and had a variety of bizarre jobs), and with his boyfriend, Hugh, in Europe.

Most of my favorite stories involve his family, especially stories from his youth. He adds one such gem here - "The Understudy," which features one of the worst babysitters in history, the corpulent and itchy, Mrs. Peacock. This story has more laugh-out-loud moments than anything I've read since....well since Sedaris' last book. I tend to enjoy less his essays about his years when he was an active drug user, although "All the Beauty You Will Ever Need" is one of the better of this genre.

Alas, this collection is a bit thin on stories about his family; perhaps as he gets older he will focus more on recent events filtered through his observational humor style; "Crybaby" is a good example from this collection. The longest section of the book details his attempt to stop smoking in Tokyo, which is not the strongest ending to this otherwise solid collection. Overall, "When You Are Engulfed in Flames" is average work for Sedaris; not as good "Naked" but still likely to keep his fans entertained and better than most humor essayists.

This was a nice read--but, a little different from other David Sedaris books...not in a bad way. This book is about David's adult life...

I really was surprised by how much I enjoyed this. A few times, I laughed aloud- quite unusual for me if I am alone reading. Honestly, I was sorry when I finished the book-