Book Review: When You Are Engulfed in Flames

"When You Are Engulfed in Flames" is the newest offering of David Sedaris, one of the funniest essayists of our time. "Flames" is another collection of stories with Sedaris as our focal point.

For those of you not familiar with his work, David Sedaris takes what probably started as dairy entries and fleshes out the narrative far enough to create a two to ten-page essay, usually centering on a new character (an elderly neighbor) or interesting situation (stuck on an airplane with a crazy person).

Maybe David has gotten too famous (or known) to have interesting situations fall into his lap these days. I loved some of his earlier stuff ("The Santaland Diaries" and "Me Talk Pretty One Day"), but this seems a little like warmed-up leftovers to me. There are quite a few chuckles, but no real knock-down laughs. And when he tries for poignant, it comes out a little flat because of the lack of good laughs.

Overall, it's a good effort, but not one of his best. In Spill parlance, this one's a low Matinee (I guess that means wait for the paperback).