“What can there possibly be left in the Sedaris backstory that the writer hasn’t already mined?” asked Emma Brockes in The Guardian. The American humourist has written nine volumes of essays over his decades-long career, which leaves you wondering whether he’s “suffering from a problem that comes to all writers in the end” – a “dearth of usable material”.
But his latest collection reveals that he hasn’t run out of ideas yet. While reading Sedaris is a “glitchier experience” than it once was, his “tone still charms, even as it advances to a state of crankiness that makes him look like a gay Larry David”.
In the 28 pieces that make up “The Land and its People”, Sedaris sticks to his tried-and-tested formula of harvesting from “everyday experiences with his husband, Hugh, his siblings and his friends”. The book is peppered with “laugh-out-loud moments”, like his experience of a No Kings protest against Trump in which he finds himself “baffled by his fellow protesters’ lack of focus”. But there are also sections that “an editor could have put a red line through”, where he veers into an “occasionally too rote adoption of the grumpy-old-man trope”.
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Inevitably some of the essays “have more going for them, and more in them, than others”, said Roddy Doyle in The New York Times. Is it as funny as his earlier books? “We’re very lucky to have both.” Sedaris has grown older and the “world seems weirder”. That’s why I love reading his work: “for him, being alive has always been strange and atrocious, contradictory, unfair and hilarious”. Now approaching 70, he “examines ageing with the same vigour, curiosity and grim glee” that brought his other books to life.
It is when he reflects on the “minutiae of everyday life” that his writing “really shines”, said Buzz Magazine. Whether he’s “documenting a humdrum car journey” or “arguing in bad French with an AI assistant on Duolingo”, Sedaris remains a “masterful storyteller” who is “always outrageous and highly entertaining company”.
Sometimes “ill-tempered and frequently hilarious”, he brings readers with him on a “touchingly honest journey through life’s peaks and troughs”, and continues to “mine gold from both the mundane and absurd”.
