With his usual candor and dry wit, David Sedaris (Calypso; The Best of Me) takes on partnership, dogs, and religion in the 28 essays that compose his 16th book, The Land and Its People.
In "And Your Little Dog, Too," he witnesses the ravages of fentanyl on Portland, Ore., while visiting the city. He passes a group smoking fentanyl around an empty baby carriage; one of their small unleashed dogs bites him, breaking the skin. Every person he tells, from a pharmacist to the fans in his autograph line later that day, offers some defense of the dog owners, rather than sympathy for Sedaris.
"The Hem of His Garment" sends up Catholicism, distinguishes how Sedaris categorizes "queer" and "gay" people ("queer people... have the rest of us walking on potato chips, afraid we're using the wrong pronoun or saying 'mother fucker' instead of 'mothering person fucker'"), and discusses the etiquette of paying one's respects to the pope (Sedaris and other luminaries were guests at the Vatican). The highlight of Sedaris's account is cassock shopping in Rome with Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
In other essays, Sedaris acknowledges how his shortcomings get in the way of intimacy. A perfect example is the opening essay, "Care and Feeding," in which his husband, Hugh, undergoes hip-replacement surgery, and Sedaris asks his husband's brother John to come and tend to the patient. "By outsourcing Hugh's care, I had shut myself out of his recovery," Sedaris writes. "Now I wanted back in, but it was too late." Herein lies the core of Sedaris's charm: he's able to laugh at himself and his flaws, and to take readers along with him. --Jennifer M. Brown