Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim - David Sedaris

This is a book that I was given to read last month by The Estuary Bookclub Club at Southend on Sea Library. I had already read it about 6 months or so ago and although I had found it funny I wasn't that enthused about reading it again, especially as I have so many books that need reading of my own. Anyway I did pick it up again and I'm so glad I did. On second reading I found it even funnier than I did the first time.

David Sedaris is a humourist who has written a number of books and has contributed to The New Yorker, GQ Magazine and Esquire. This book is a compilation of the articles that have appeared in those magazines.

Dress Your Family... draws mainly on Sedaris' life growing up in North Carolina. It chronicles his family, his friends, his neighbours and his realisation at an early age that he was gay. It is camp, waspish and full of one liners. I found myself laughing out loud a#on many occasions. I'm only pleased that I have been off from work otherwise I would have been laughing out loud on the train and we know that that is just not donein this country.

He writes candidly about his relationships with his brother and sisters and about his somewhat volatile relationship with his partner Hugh, who he seems to argue with constantly. Not in a nasty way but rather in a bitchy queen way that is hilarious.

n one of my favourite stories in the book David has been picked on by one of the local kids and he complains to his father about it;

My father demanded I retaliate, saying Iought to knock him on the guy on his ass.
"Oh Dad"
"Aww baloney. Clock him on the snot locker and he'll go down likea ton of bricks".
"Are you talking to me?" I asked. The archaic slang aside, who did my father think I was? Boys who spent their weekends making banana nut muffins did not, as a rule, excel in the art of hand-to-hand combat.

This is just one example of Sedaris' wit. This a fabulous book and David Sedaris is a very funny man indeed.