Thank God for Laurie Notaro. She makes all of us who consider ourselves to be complete dorks feel that we’re not alone. In her five memoirs, she documents everything from the trials and tribulations of Christmas shopping with her slightly senile grandmother to the fear that she unknowingly gave her future husband a sexually transmitted disease.
Now, Notaro has decided to tackle fiction with her first novel, There’s a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell: A Novel of Sewer Pipes, Pageant Queens, and Big Trouble. Maye Roberts, a city-beat news reporter, and her husband, Charlie, a college professor, move from their comfortable surroundings in Phoenix to the tight-knit community of Spaulding, Washington, after Charlie accepts a job offer at the university. Maye is so preoccupied with the move, she forgets that she’ll be living in a town where she doesn’t know a soul. Working from home as a freelance writer doesn’t provide too many opportunities to meet people, so once she and Charlie settle into their new house, Maye sets out to make some friends. She works hard to make a good impression, but her best intentions often backfire. Nothing like trying to remove an uncomfortable sweater and accidentally showing off your goods to your husband’s professor colleagues at a faculty party to make you fit right in. Poor Maye—it’s a scene right out of the nightmare we’ve all had about being naked in a public place. Except in her case, it actually happens!
After a few more well-meaning but disastrous attempts at meeting people—she stumbles into a coven of witches disguised as a “Gothic book club” and is outed as a meat-loving carnivore at a vegetarians’ meeting—Maye takes her realtor’s advice and decides to enter the town’s most popular contest—the Sewer Pipe Queen Pageant.
During the course of the pageant, Maye stumbles onto a long-buried town secret, locates the long-lost Queen of Queens and convinces her to be her coach. In the end, Maye wins over some of the townspeople in her own unique way.
For fans of Notaro’s real-life misadventures, There’s a Slight Chance… is more of the same humor we know and love. For newcomers to her work, this is a good place to start, and if this makes you laugh out loud, check out some of her other titles:
The Idiot Girls’ Action-Adventure Club
Autobiography of a Fat Bride: True Tales of a Pretend Adulthood
I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies)
We Thought You Would Be Prettier: True Tales of the Dorkiest Girl Alive
An Idiot Girl's Christmas: True Tales from the Top of the Naughty List
Sara G. Hodon - Sara G. Hodon has been pursuing a part-time freelance writing career for the past five years. She is a regular stringer for her community ...
