Naked - David Sedaris

A riotous collection of memoirs which explores the absurd hilarity of modern life and creates a wickedly incisive portrait of an all-too-familiar world. It takes Sedaris from his humiliating bout with obsessive behaviour in 'A Plague of Tics' to the title story, where he is finally forced to face his naked self in the company of lunatics. At this soulful and moving moment, he brushes cigarette ashes from his pubic hair and wonders what it all means. This remarkable journey into his own life follows a path of self- effacement and a lifelong search for identity leaving himself both under suspicion and over dressed.


Why Read - Recommendation of author from a friend, she recommended it as a similar book to others that I read.  Saw the author and thought I would give him a shot.

When I first brought this I did not realise it was a memoir, but could tell from the style of writing that it was.  Snippets of life throughout mostly his teen and early adult years.  It started off really well - funny in an slightly odd way, i.e. him as a child licking light switches. However he seems to drop most of his oddities as he gets older and is more introvertly odd as oppose to odd physical behaviours.

His chapter follow roughly in order which makes the book logical and he helpfully highlights roughly in his life when the chapter relates to, and keeps each chapter relating to a section of his life, so you don't feel lost whilst reading it.  The tone is amusing and he writes in a very blunt way, and very realistic. Additionally this book was classed as Travel writing book, i would not agree with this at all, its more of a memoir than travel - although he moved around America a bit, he mostly wrote about him, not about the places he travelled too.

I think it was hard to be gripped by this story, and it did require some concentration and thinking to get exactly where he was coming from. Some bits were more interesting than others and some sections I did find very funny. I did not love this book, but it did amuse me somewhat. His crazy behaviour especially, however i did feel he lost his momentum in places.  And when i got to the ending it felt a bit abrupt, but then thinking back to the story and the title of the novel it actually made rather good sense to end it as it did, and this was almost the underlining theme of the book. Outwardly some of it made no sense and was confusing but if you stopped to think a lot of it made sense.