Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls

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After the exciting reading experience that was Daisy Darker, I’ve been running on a bit of a literary adrenaline-pinch. You know that feeling when you read a book that you enjoy so much that it re-addicts you to the feel of reading? I’ve had that all week. The next book on the pile on my bedside table was a work of non-fiction belonging to my partner, which he recommended I read before we released it into the wild to find a new home. So the excess adrenaline I had from Daisy Darker has been successfully sunk into David Sedaris’ Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls.

A series of random chapters that chronicles random scenes and moments of Sedaris’ life, the book is a little bit memoir and a little bit think-piece, but all entirely funny and fascinating. While Sedaris chooses to focus on small, seemingly unimportant anecdotes to share with the reader, the common thread of each chapter is that it explores Sedaris’ relationship with the world its inhabitants. From dissuading a telemarketer from sending him a cellphone, but hoping that he’ll call again to chat, to bonding with his sister and father over a colonoscopy, Sedaris shapes each episode into something of a love story; exploring the different loves of partners, families, and society.

Despite never getting to the Chekhov’s diabetes of the title (the owls make an appearance though), Sedaris’ book is an interesting and down-to-earth memoir that feels like having a friend over for coffee and just catching up. The jagged and random series of events chronicled are enjoyable and light conversation, while simultaneously doing what human discussions do and trying to make sense of the world on a deeper level. The idea that, despite centuries of novels, poems, songs, and theses, we still don’t have a solid grasp on how our world and its inhabitants affect us and our relationships, is very subtly underlying each story. More so as Sedaris reminisces of times gone by when childhoods were so different to the ones of today, how our relationship with technology has changed, and sexuality and gender identities were a little less confusing.

Image credit: Erie Reader

Overall, I enjoyed this book. The prose is simple and conversational with smatterings of slightly judgmental humour colouring the chapters. There are some scenes in which I couldn’t tell if the opinions put forward were indeed the author’s own, or a voice adopted to reflect society, and while these scenes sometimes made me uncomfortable (namely a scene talking about trans people, and then reinstating Jesus Christ as the king of the world), for the most part I powered through this book quick enough and found myself compelled by the author’s voice and the stories he was telling.

Author: David Sedaris, 2013

Published: Abacus (Great Britain), 2013