Happy-Go-Lucky Happy-Go-Lucky

Happy-Go-Lucky

    • 4.4 • 470 Ratings
    • $11.99

Publisher Description

David Sedaris, the “champion storyteller,” (Los Angeles Times) returns with his first new collection of personal essays since the bestselling Calypso
Back when restaurant menus were still printed on paper, and wearing a mask—or not—was a decision made mostly on Halloween, David Sedaris spent his time doing normal things. As Happy-Go-Lucky opens, he is learning to shoot guns with his sister, visiting muddy flea markets in Serbia, buying gummy worms to feed to ants, and telling his nonagenarian father wheelchair jokes.
 
But then the pandemic hits, and like so many others, he’s stuck in lockdown, unable to tour and read for audiences, the part of his work he loves most. To cope, he walks for miles through a nearly deserted city, smelling only his own breath. He vacuums his apartment twice a day, fails to hoard anything, and contemplates how sex workers and acupuncturists might be getting by during quarantine.
 
As the world gradually settles into a new reality, Sedaris too finds himself changed. His offer to fix a stranger’s teeth rebuffed, he straightens his own, and ventures into the world with new confidence. Newly orphaned, he considers what it means, in his seventh decade, no longer to be someone’s son. And back on the road, he discovers a battle-scarred America: people weary, storefronts empty or festooned with Help Wanted signs, walls painted with graffiti reflecting the contradictory messages of our time: Eat the Rich. Trump 2024. Black Lives Matter.
 
In Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris once again captures what is most unexpected, hilarious, and poignant about these recent upheavals, personal and public, and expresses in precise language both the misanthropy and desire for connection that drive us all. If we must live in interesting times, there is no one better to chronicle them than the incomparable David Sedaris.

GENRE
Humor
RELEASED
2022
May 31
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
272
Pages
PUBLISHER
Little, Brown and Company
SELLER
Hachette Digital, Inc.
SIZE
716.4
KB

Customer Reviews

Trepang ,

Happy go lucky

I though it was laugh out loud and a bit depressing. Always love his style though I found myself thinking like David at times. Sorta smartly smarmy not caring if others picked up on the sarcasm or irony of my words or darkened humor. Then my friends wife died. Oh boy. Hope he wasn’t offended when I told him I’m dropping everything and go into the house a pop a bourbon to Lois. I meant it but was it just another excuse to have an early bourbon??

brock_zahler ,

Love

Forgot how much I love David’s writing. He’s funny and relatable and always game to make fun of himself. I think his observations on the pandemic, race, and death in this book specifically make it one of his best offerings. I’d recommend to anyone who like short stories or one of David’s other million books.

sjxufhrnwhxgvydjsjd ,

Junk food

I hadn’t read sedaris in a few years; not sure if he changed or if I did. The wit is still intact but the vapidity and misanthropy have crossed from endearing to off putting. I finished it and was frequently amused but didn’t feel great about it and likely won’t read him again.

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