'Calypso': David Sedaris shines in tales of family, loss and a favorite turtle

Gary Levin | USA TODAY

In nine books spanning 20 years, David Sedaris has riffed on matters both cosmic and mundane, from growing up with his tight-knit Greek-American family in the suburbs of Raleigh, N.C., to his account of working as an elf at Macy’s in his well-known essay "SantaLand Diaries."

Appearances on NPR and in The New Yorker, later published in book form, burnished his reputation for caustic, sharply observed wit.

His new book, Calypso (Little, Brown, 259 pp., ★★★½ out of four), his first collection in five years, takes a more melancholy, self-reflective turn, as Sedaris, 61, confronts aging and mortality.

It has fewer laugh-out-loud moments, but feels more substantial and rewarding than some of his earlier efforts, especially his underwhelming previous collection of essays, Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls. (Theft By Finding, excerpts from his 1977-2002 diaries, was published last year.)

Sure, Sedaris’ wry voice enhances stories about his obsession with a Fitbit fitness-tracking device, fad diets, his short stature (I can relate) and the perks and pitfalls of frequent travel for his lucrative lecture tours.

A recurring setting is the North Carolina beach house, playfully dubbed the Sea Section, that he purchased as a gathering spot for his scattered family, including his actress sister, Amy, and his longtime boyfriend, Hugh, with whom he lives in West Sussex, England.

But for the first time, he also addresses, poignantly, the 2013 suicide of his estranged sister Tiffany, the youngest of his five siblings. And while his mother, Sharon, who died of cancer in 1991, has been a frequent subject in his books, Sedaris now reckons with her alcoholism, which his family barely acknowledged in her final years. He examines this willful avoidance ironically, through his love of the reality series Intervention.

Sedaris, whose work is ostensibly non-fiction, has been criticized for embellishing his tales or inventing characters. A 2007 fact-check of his work in The New Republic revealed made-up characters or events that never happened, and the author has described his own recollections as “realish.”

The new book includes an improbable tale of his enlistment of a child-size stranger, whom he met at an El Paso book signing, to surgically remove a benign egg-size tumor, which he intended to feed to a favorite snapping turtle at a park. “All told, it was an exceptional evening: a chance to meet interesting new people and have at least one of them reach inside of me with her tiny hands," he writes.

As a longtime fan of his humorous essays, I don’t much care what liberties Sedaris takes. But much of his writing in Calypso, especially personal reflections on his family, feels true. Or at least true-ish, a fungible commodity these days.

Perhaps he’s simply channeling his late mother, whose specialty “was the real-life story, perfected and condensed,” he writes. “Over the course of the day, the line she wished she's delivered in response to some question or comment — the zinger — would become the line she had delivered.”

More: Author David Sedaris has no regrets over joke about smothering Trump in his crib

Inevitably, that penchant for exaggeration leads to Donald Trump, and pained reflections on the 2016 election. Trump's rise put Sedaris at odds with his Greek-American father, Lou, now in his 90s. They've never been close, and Lou may never have accepted that David is gay, though he imparted an appreciation for jazz.

“The silence my father and I inflicted on each other back then is now exacerbated by his advanced age,” Sedaris writes ruefully. “Every time I see him could be the last, and the pressure I feel to make our conversations meaningful paralyzes me.”

That’s not a thought that’s easily embellished.