David Sedaris' "Naked": Next of Kin

“Next of Kin” is another short but somewhat disturbing vignette, remniscent of Augusten Burroughs’ “Transfixed by Transsexuals.” The passing around in the family of a book discovered while babysitting, a crude explicit book about incest, exposes many uncomfortable, Freudian issues. I laughed out loud at the misspellings in the book – “Feck me hard, hardir,” The book fosters paranoia towards other family members and other families in the neighborhood. They speculate on whether the Sherman family is engaged in the horrific acts described, and they recoil in horror when their parents show them any affection. To stop the madness, David employs a sort of “pay-it-forward” strategy, dropping the book in the bed of a pickup truck. Despite the dark material of the book they read, this is one of the lighter stories about the family, and also one of the shortest. Sedaris once again uses exaggerated hyperbole to represent the overreactive feelings of a young adolescent, and the tone is exactly right.