When You Are Engulfed in Flames - Softcover

Sedaris, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0316024597 ISBN 13: 9780316024594

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2008

Synopsis

"David Sedaris's ability to transform the mortification of everyday life into wildly entertaining art," (The Christian Science Monitor) is elevated to wilder and more entertaining heights than ever in this remarkable new book.
Trying to make coffee when the water is shut off, David considers using the water in a vase of flowers and his chain of associations takes him from the French countryside to a hilariously uncomfortable memory of buying drugs in a mobile home in rural North Carolina. In essay after essay, Sedaris proceeds from bizarre conundrums of daily life-having a lozenge fall from your mouth into the lap of a fellow passenger on a plane or armoring the windows with LP covers to protect the house from neurotic songbirds-to the most deeply resonant human truths. Culminating in a brilliant account of his venture to Tokyo in order to quit smoking, David Sedaris's sixth essay collection is a new masterpiece of comic writing from "a writer worth treasuring" (Seattle Times).

Praise for When You Are Engulfed in Flames

"Older, wiser, smarter and meaner, Sedaris...defies the odds once again by delivering an intelligent take on the banalities of an absurd life." --Kirkus Reviews

This latest collection proves that not only does Sedaris still have it, but he's also getting better....Sedaris's best stuff will still--after all this time--move, surprise, and entertain." --Booklist

Table of Contents:

It's Catching
Keeping Up
The Understudy
This Old House
Buddy, Can You Spare a Tie?
Road Trips
What I Learned
That's Amore
The Monster Mash
In the Waiting Room
Solutions to Saturday's Puzzle
Adult Figures Charging Toward a Concrete Toadstool
Memento Mori
All the Beauty You Will Ever Need
Town and Country
Aerial
The Man in the Hut
Of Mice and Men
April in Paris
Crybaby
Old Faithful
The Smoking Section

About this title

Review:

There are pages in this short story collection that made me giggle so violently that my lungs hurt (THE TIMES)

He has a lovely, sinuous way of writing, saving the gag until you've forgotten you were expecting one. (SUNDAY TIMES)

Good stuff (SUNDAY TELEGRAPH)

A humourist in the Woody Allen mould (INDEPENDENT)

Book Description:

* A brilliant new collection of stories from the number 1 bestselling writer named by TIME magazine as America's Favorite Humorist

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0316024597
• ISBN 13: 9780316024594
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 512