Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

“Do yourself a favor and rush out to read the damn book for yourself. Its already shaping up to be a summer starved for good laughs and, familiar though they may seem, you’ll find few better than the ones on offer in Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim.” —Washington Post 

“Like his earlier performances, the essays are sardonic, funny and wry, but at the same time there is a new strain of introspection that makes for a book with more emotional resonance, a more complex aftertaste. The embarrassments of adolescence, the difficulties of connecting, the sense of being a perpetual outsider—these perennial themes of the author are not simply played for self-deprecating laughs in this volume, but are made to yield a more Chekhovian brand of comedy.” —New York Times

“Sedaris, humorist and author of the bestselling Me Talk Pretty One Day, once again exhibits his knack for spinning unsettling experiences into pure comic gold.” —USA Today

“In his latest collection, Sedaris has found his heart. This is not to suggest that the author of Me Talk Pretty One Day and other bestselling books has lost his edge. The twenty-seven essays here include his best and funniest writing yet. Here is Sedaris’s family in all its odd glory…His mother emerges as one of the most poignant and original female characters in contemporary literature. She balances bitter and sweet, tart and rich—and so does Sedaris, because this is what life is like. ‘You should look at yourself,’ his mother says in one piece, as young Sedaris crams Halloween candy into his mouth rather than share it. He does what she says and then some, and what emerges is the deepest kind of humor, the human comedy.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Sedaris has a knack for turning heartbreaking antics into moments of outrageous humor…It’s a hallmark of true comedic wit when stories can be heard more than once and still generate laughter. Highly recommended for all audio collections.” —Library Journal (audio review)

“Sedaris’ piquant essays are as meticulously honed and precisely timed as the best stand-up comic routines, which is, of course, what they are. A National Public Radio star, the author of five bestsellers, including Me Talk Pretty One Day, and a hall-filling performer, Sedaris—openly gay, nervy as a tightrope walker, sharply hilarious, teasingly misanthropic yet genuinely compassionate—has a unique ability to supply exactly the right details to bring every funny, awkward, ludicrous, painful, horrible real-life moment into harrowingly crisp focus…he is mesmerizing, and his ability to make the reader gasp, laugh out loud, or grow teary is undiminished. At the same time, there’s an increased edginess to his work, reminding readers that beneath the brio, Sedaris, gifted connoisseur of the absurd, is deadly serious.” —Booklist