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Little, Brown & Company, September 2010

In his new book of stories, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary, David Sedaris proves that he's a master at pushing the limits of whatever genre he chooses to write. This time - it's fiction, and in this wacky world that only Sedaris could dream up, animal characters take vacations, go on dates, and go to jail. The result is a collection that's surprising, bizarre, and disturbing - but in a funny way, of course.

David Sedaris is perhaps first known as a humorist and a regular contributor to Public Radio International's This American Life. However, his last three collections of personal essays - Me Talk Pretty One Day, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, and When You Are Engulfed in Flames - became immediate bestsellers. Seven million copies of his books are now in print, and they have been translated into 25 languages.

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk is a collection of fables, but these are the adult-only versions of what at first might seem to be subject matter appropriate for children. And the titles of the stories don't suggest otherwise. "The Mouse and the Snake," for example, quite innocuously introduces the story of an unlikely animal friendship that turns awry. In another, "Hello Kitty" is the cute title for a story about a criminal cat who attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings while in prison, even though everyone knows he'll "break into the nearest liquor store and start making up for lost time" as soon as he gets out.

Despite their nondescript titles, each animal story in this collection contains some nugget of truth that its human readers will recognize. In "The Parenting Storks," a mother stork and her sister clash over their different child-rearing styles and cultural beliefs. But as the story demonstrates in the end, children often do what they will regardless of-or sometimes in spite of-what any parent might expect.

In "The Vigilant Rabbit," another story in which animal characters act a lot like humans, a rabbit decides to protect the gate of an open territory in danger. On his first morning as "chief of security," the rabbit begins overstepping the bounds of his new position, becoming increasingly territorial and unjustifiably power-wieldy. In a quick, last-sentence stroke of justice, the rabbit gets paid back at least what he's been dishing out.

While the vigilant rabbit seems to get what he deserves, other characters in these stories have random run-ins with bad luck or come to meet some disconcerting, even gruesome, ends. Several of these animals eat others or get eaten; they die unexpectedly and violently. Blood gets spilled. Eyes get poked out.

The stories in Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk are not for the fainthearted, and their bawdiness might be off-putting to some. These animal characters cuss, make inappropriate jokes, and otherwise say some pretty offensive things. It's tempting to dismiss these moments because the characters are animals, after all. But they're ultimately unsettling because these animals have human speech patterns, thoughts, and mannerisms. If they're not like us, they're certainly like someone we know, and their actions serve to highlight the less desirable aspects of ourselves.

Ian Falconer, the author and illustrator of the bestselling Olivia series of children's books, illustrates Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, somehow capturing the essence of these characters - whether it's the naivety of a mouse who keeps a snake for a pet or the gullibility of a ewe guarding her lamb. Falconer's illustrations expertly mirror the style that Sedaris sets forth in this collection by drawing grown-up versions of characters fit for children's books. Like Sedaris, Falconer's not queasy at the thought of blood and guts, nor does he shy away from including them in his illustrations.

Sedaris uses the resemblance of his animal characters to his human audience in a powerful way. If there's a theme for this collection, it's that life is cruel, but friendship makes a cruel life more livable. When a faithful setter returns to the "long business of loving" his "hangdog wife," or when a potbellied pig awkwardly accepts a parrot's outstretched claw in his hoof, Sedaris shows how a cruel life can morph into something that's not just bearable, but something that's unexpectedly beautiful instead.



Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.