Autobiography of a Fat Bride

May 12, 2003
Notaro (The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club) opens with enough dumped-by-loser-boyfriend stories that readers will share her skepticism when Good Guy finally appears. "He was an endangered species," Notaro writes. "he only thing that could make him more valuable was if he were albino." Since Notaro can't keep Good Guy drunk and clueless forever, she switches to Plan B: frying cutlets, her major life skill. It works, and soon enough they're happily married. If this sounds mature and responsible, guess again. Other people might be able to buy a house, babysit their nephew, buy a new bra or seed their lawn without it being the least bit funny, but not Notaro. Consider the time she and her husband got a new puppy so untrainable it ate from the kitty litter box. Watching her husband get down on all fours and growl like a dog to show kitty who's in charge, Notaro comments, "Well, then, I'm not going to bother making dinner.... The cat just had a bowel movement big enough for the both of you." True, there's a lot of bathroom humor, but it's Notaro's odd take on the ordinary that's funniest. "H&R Block is really Practice Prison," a taste of what tax evaders can expect. Her sister using a breast pump looks like "a hybrid of Barbarella and a Holstein." And who else but Notaro can whisper to her (unwanted) cat as she crates him up for a trip to the vet: "if you see a bright, white light, run toward it"? (July)Forecast:Notaro's first book was originally self-published, picked up by Villard and spent two months on the
New York Times bestseller list.
Fat Bride's attractive price and funny jacket (of a woman leaning into the refrigerator) will undoubtedly lure in fans from her first book and new readers, too.

March 1, 2003
Having provoked tears of laughter with The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club, Notaro returns with a tongue-in-cheek account of love and marriage.

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2003
Notaro's first book, " The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club " (2002), achieved cult status and became a surprise best-seller. Returning with another uproarious collection of personal essays from the dating front, Notaro proves that her first-time success wasn't a fluke. Detailing her trip down the bumpy road to matrimony, Notaro outrageously entertains with a sweetly skewed outlook on everything from breaded meats to baby wipes. Having endured boyfriends from hell and survived kamikaze-style dating, Notaro does the unthinkable by getting someone to fall in love with her! This, in Notaro's world, is not the equivalent of the Holy Grail. First, there are in-laws to impress and weddings to plan, both without inflicting bodily harm or doing jail time. Next come the challenges of permanent cohabitation, with its surprise revelations of untoward bodily functions and appearances. Finally, there are the joys of first-time home ownership and joint income-tax filing. Notaro tackles them all with the inimitable, acerbic wit and ruthless, self-deprecating candor that have deservedly earned her legions of loyal fans. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2003
The adage "Don't judge a book by its cover" is especially true of humor columnist Notaro's latest work. Her second collection of real-life stories-a follow-up to her best-selling The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club: True Tales from a Magnificent and Clumsy Life-has little to do with either the title or the cover, which depicts a voluptuous woman in fringed panties with her head ensconced in a refrigerator. In fact, except for a few comments about her Italian American family's stereotypical predilection toward food, this series of personal vignettes has little to do with Notaro's being overweight. Instead, the thirtysomething author relates humorous stories of her dating life prior to her engagement and marriage, stories that try hard, but ultimately fail, to capture the sophistication and wit of Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary. Her tales of married life are more insightful, and she often points out the humor and absurdity in the mundane situations that husbands and wives face daily: her struggles with the air conditioner in the 70-year-old bungalow the couple purchased in Arizona, which she describes as a "corroded swamp cooler" but cannot afford to replace; her mistakenly using her husband's toothbrush as a cleaning and craft brush; and the yearly stress of the holidays, which she and her husband deal with in March when finally taking down the Christmas tree. On the whole, while not a groundbreaking effort, Notaro's depiction of her life as a series of amusing anecdotes provides a fun read for fans of humor essays. Suitable for public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 3/1/03.]-Donna Marie Smith, Palm Beach Cty. Lib. Syst., FL

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.