There’s a reason why David Sedaris has his own Radio 4 series and regularly sells out Carnegie Hall in New York: as a performer of his own prose he’s unmatched. Which is to say, the best way to enjoy Sedaris’s waspish and funny essay collection Happy-Go-Lucky is to hear it read by its author.
Sedaris devotees will be familiar with the family members who inhabit his stories, each portrayed in all their flawed glory. There is his bellicose father, who died in 2021, and who is recalled here in the essay Father Time. Visiting him one day, Sedaris finds him bleeding after his eponymous grandfather clock has fallen on him. “When you’re 95 and Father Time literally knocks you to the ground, don’t you think he’s maybe trying to tell you something?” Sedaris wonders.
