Description
Book SynopsisIn David Sedaris''s world, no one is safe and no cow is sacred. A manic cross between Mark Leyner, Fran Lebowitz and the National Enquirer, Sedaris''s collection of stories and essays is a rollicking tour through the American Zeitgeist: a man who is loved too much flees the heavyweight champion of the world; a teenage suicide tried to incite a lynch mob at her funeral; and in his essays, David Sedaris considers the hazards of rewards of smoking, writing for Giantess magazine, and living with his scrappy brother Paul, aka ''The Rooster''.
With a perfect eye and a voice infused with as much empathy as wit, Sedaris writes and reads stories and essays that target the soulful ridiculousness of our behaviour. Barrel Fever is like a blind date with modern life - and anything can happen.
Trade ReviewSo often Sedaris's phrasing is beautiful in its piquancy and minimalism...His life is extraordinary in so many ways - the drug addiction, the eccentric family, the crazy jobs, the fame, the globetrotting - but one of the more unlikely achievements here is in making it all seem quite ordinary.
Ultimately, his masterstroke is in acting as a bystander in his own story * Guardian *
He makes me laugh so much. In an era when US satire is outpacing our own he's
a sharp, humane and hilarious voice that never fails to make you smile - and sometimes weep. Apparently effortless humour is difficult, and precious.
He's the real thing -- James Naughtie * Radio Times *
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 -- Craig Brown * Mail on Sunday *
I don't very often find myself moved by a book to emit loud noises in public, but when I first read David Sedaris's essays and short stories, they made me laugh so hard I had to stop taking them on the tube. All his collections are good but 'Barrel Fever * is the best’ *
#NAME? * 'A satirical brazenness that holds up next to Twain and Nathaneal West’ *
New YORKER * 'David and Amy Sedaris have a deadpan delivery as ironic as the words they read. The two of them create a nuclear barrage of humour you could never replicate by reading this material on your own’ *
BOSTON Globe
