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Happy-Go-Lucky
- Narrated by: David Sedaris
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
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Summary
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.
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What listeners say about Happy-Go-Lucky
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- Julian Konczak
- 19-06-22
latest and possibly last excellent work by maestro
Another excellent piece of work by Sedaris - some memorable pieces including reflections on his father's demise, passages that in themselves make this audiobook worthwhile. However, there is a sense of the cream about to sour with the inclusion of the insistent reminders of his vast wealth.- possibly ironic intention and self-deprecating delivery still give the feeling of decadence and finality. Similarly, the knots he managed to tie himself into regarding his need to appeal to a distinct demographic of liberal anti-Trump fanatics and Covid cult members undermined much of his generally astute and non-partisan observations of the human circus.
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2 people found this helpful
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- keepingitreal
- 11-06-22
Brilliant as ever - but a missed edit left in
David Sedaris is excellent as ever. Worth flagging overlaid audio approx 31 minutes into Hurricane Season.
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2 people found this helpful
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- IAN BOOTH
- 08-02-24
Brilliant as expected
If you like David’s work then you’ll love this as much as his other work.
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- S
- 01-02-24
Sedaris Perfection
Wonderful, as ever. Highly recommended. Excellent performance and even better writing. Well worth your credit.
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- Amazon Customer sandra
- 19-12-23
Disapointing
I was very disapointed in this .I am a great fan of Davis Sedaris. Perhaps picked wrong
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- Steve R
- 27-09-23
David Sedaris you make me smile
It's hilarious to hear more stories of how David's family functions. From his father who's parenting style seemed really quite deranged to his sister Amy who's zany lifestyle and incredible energy keeps me laughing with each encounter. No stuffy high brow review from me here but if you find the human condition amusing at times you'll enjoy this audiobook and marvel at David's 'no punches pulled' style of writing.
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- Ian Haughton
- 22-09-23
Much needed
My first David Sedaris book. What took me so long? Very funny, highly recommended. I’ll read many more.
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- Skankingqueen
- 01-08-23
Excellent
A truly funny book, read by the author himself. This man is such an excellent satirist.
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- Gavin Hills-Jones
- 09-07-23
Brilliant Book
I really enjoyed every bit of this book which made me laugh out loud throughout
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- Rachel Redford
- 30-05-23
Razor-sharp - great stuff!
David Sedaris is in his sixties with a long and successful career in print and speaking as a razor-sharp, sardonic, witty, wide-ranging commentator and deplorer of today’s society. This is my first experience of him and I loved it. His delivery is all and with his experience as a performer no-one else could possibly speak his work like he does.
I’ve seen him repeatedly referred to as a misogynist but I don’t think he is – there’s far too much warm humanity (admittedly frequently well-hidden) and even tenderness amongst all his coruscating and scathing observations. He loves his sisters, tolerates the aspects he doesn’t like of his moody husband Hugh ; and paints with compassion the ghastly life of his wheelchair-bound father who had always belittled him. And he buys candy to feed the ants! Also there’s too much hilarious comment and joyfully inventive language for a misogynist: his sister’s indoor roaming rabbit (yes!)chews his eye lashes and leaves his electronic device wireless before there was such a thing; he invents the name ‘gunderpants’ for the underpants designed to mask a gun (yes really) marketed at a shockingly awful gun fare.
I like the boldness of Sedaris in speaking out – there is plenty here which could give offence to those who are easily offended, but Sedaris makes it funny. If you think the advantages to be experienced by a bone marrow donor, an excruciating internal camera examination, jokes about Vegans or priests could NEVER be funny – then this isn’t for you. One of Sedaris’s skills is that he laces his invective with exaggeration and laugh-aloud ridicule, making terrible experiences bearable and lifting the out-of-bounds topics into wickedly sharp debate.
He certainly scorns many aspects of society – he hates with equal venom America’s gun culture and the woman who feeds her ‘fur baby’ his restaurant meal. He is driven to fury by the damaging effects of Covid including the deaths of one million Americans as much as by the woman, the ‘horrible human being’, who jumps his book-signing queue. Joking doesn’t mask his opinion of higher education, telling his university student audience working , as he says, ‘for a degree in dance history’ hat ‘if you could draw Snoopy on a beer mat you’d be in’.
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