SomethingToDo2

When a book gets the David Sedaris official tick of approval, you know it’s going to be a goodie.

David Sedaris is one of my all-time favourite authors. At a reading in January, someone asked him “what was the best book he’d read of late?” You could see hundreds of people — yes, including me — scrambling for their pens and Moleskins as he said “Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower. I loved it!”

Wells_Tower

But if you’re hoping for something similar to Sedaris’ own brand of wit and comical family stories, you’ll be greatly disappointed.

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned (Granta, rrp $32.99)  is a series of quite depressing stories about fucked-up people, predominantly men. Men who’ve had sad things happen to them — divorce, family issues, abuse — and then hide away from society to lick their wounds. When they try to re-engage with the world again, life craps all over them.

But there is much beauty among the sadness, a black humour that pervades the writing. Horrible, sad, unfair things happen to people — they get in fist fights they didn’t deserve to be in, they accidentally kill the only things they care about — but the irony of the mess is not lost.

Wells Tower has a great talent for writing about troubled men. In fact, the story that I found a little lacking was Wild America, the only one with a female protagonist. One of my favourites was the title story, a tale of the ordinary life of Vikings and how pillaging gets a little old. It was different, it was funny, it was completely believable even though it was about bored Vikings.

The stories are perfectly sized for a quick read before bedtime. If you’re looking for a something a little kooky, a little bitter but entirely fascinating and thought-provoking, then give it a go and make Sedaris proud.