Happy-Go-Lucky
memoir/essays
Calypso was, arguably, some of Sedaris’s best work. The way it blended the hilarity of both the mundane with the dark and absurd was Sedaris at his best. Happy-Go-Lucky follows suit, and somehow Sedaris is able to find the (often) dark humour in family tragedy once again. While the essays primarily follow his relationship with, and the slow decline of, his father, there are also snippets spanning Sedaris’s whole life. From his childhood spent as one of five kids in Raleigh, North Carolina, awaiting the hatching of baby turtles at his beach house (punningly named The Sea Section), or experiencing New York’s COVID lockdown with his husband, Lou, Happy-Go-Lucky offers generous helpings of Sedaris’s signature dry style paired with hilarious, cynical, and often heartfelt musings of daily life. Fans of Sedaris will not be disappointed.
Read the titular essay here.