Read December 2004
This autobiographical collection of essays is Sedaris toying with language to tell us about his sister Amy, his boyfriend, and about his move to the French countryside. His unaffected prose is a superb vehicle for examining the disconnect one feels living a foreign country whose language one doesn't speak. Indeed, his prose sometimes even buries his intelligent observations (such as how children learn the gender of nounsthey don't, they just learn the words with the right prefix as a whole). The essays are short and easily digested in many settings; my own preference was for bedtime reading.
Thanks to whoever left behind their copy for the Dagstuhl library!