Sara Barron

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More About

• Tom Cruise
• Kirk Cameron
• David Sedaris
• Sexual and Reproductive Health
• Condoms

I am not the first person to describe Sara Barron's essay collection, People Are Unappealing: Even Me (Three Rivers Press), as "Sedarisian" and I'm not going to be the last. Hopefully you'll forgive my unoriginality and understand that using David Sedaris's name is merely shorthand to convey that Barron's writing is of a certain brand of humor that mines family quirks and seeming dysfunction (her father loves show tunes but isn't gay), adolescence (at 12 Barron wrote a screenplay she refers to as "The Porn," many scenes featured the "pienus" of characters she hoped would be played by the likes of Tom Cruise and Kirk Cameron), awful jobs (waitressing at Olive Garden), relationships and dating (she dated a man whose OCD compelled him to wear three condoms during sex), and, mostly importantly, insecurities about her own physical and emotional shortcomings to garner laughs from readers. Barron achieves this in spades.
Sat., April 18, 7 p.m., 2009