Calypso

Calypso is David Sedaris's 10th collection of essays. He writes about his eccentric family and  his partner Hugh with his usual wry humour but this collection pushes into darker territory. Many of the stories are set in the North Carolina beach house he bought to spend spend vacations with his father and siblings and which he has nicknamed the Sea Section. His youngest sister Tiffany committed suicide in 2013 after a troubled life and the impact of her death on David and the rest of the Sedaris clan resonates throughout the book. Aging, depression, mortality, alcoholism and physical frailty make appearances but in Sedaris's deft hands they become darkly comic material. When he gets a tumour on this side he has it removed by a fan (who happens to be a medical practitioner) and freezes it to feed to a deformed snapping turtle when he next visits North Carolina. His descriptions of his  Fibit/trash collecting obsessions are hilarious. Calypso is a brilliant, absurd, funny piece of oversharing that may be Sedaris's best work yet.