Memphis Reads Archive

Nonfiction/Memoir

Jeanie Condo reviews NAKED by David Sedaris (Little, Brown, 1997)

Naked is a book of vignettes, some hilarious, some zany, some bittersweet, about the author's most interesting family, his life, and the world as he sees it. In "Get Your Yayas Out," Sedaris describes his eccentric Greek grandmother, Yaya, who never referred to Sedaris' mother as anything but "the girl." Sedaris discusses his epiphany when he discovered he preferred guys instead of girls in the chapter "I Like Guys." In the hilarious chapter, "Dinah, The Christmas Whore," Sedaris shows how his rather dysfunctional family can pull together in a crunch and do the right thing. And in the final chapter, for which the book is named, Sedaris tells of his experiences while staying at a nudist colony. In Naked, David Sedaris has skillfully written a book that is alternatively laugh-out-loud funny and poignant.


Jeanie Condo, East Shelby Branch Library

Labels: Nonfiction, Reviews by Jeanie Condo