Laurie, reading, and most likely spitting on the unfortunate ladies in the front row, from It Looked Different on the Model, at St. Helen’s Bookshop.
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Everyone’s favorite Idiot Girl, Laurie Notaro, is just trying to find the right fit, whether it’s in the adorable blouse that looks charming on the mannequin but leaves her in a literal bind or in her neighborhood after she’s shamefully exposed at a holiday party by delivering a low-quality rendition of “Jingle Bells.” Notaro makes misstep after riotous misstep as she tries (and catastrophically fails) to gain some ground—delightfully whipping up butter-laden cupcakes for the local vegan kids, finding herself banned from the post office for wanting too many two-cent stamps (“The post-office lady looked at me like I had just asked her if she wanted to buy my sex tape”), and discovering what appears to be a corpse on her front lawn seconds before her sister is due to visit (“I had approximately three to four minutes to move the carcass from my yard into my neighbors’ yard so my sister would think it was their dead person”). She shares tales of marriage and family, including stories about the dog-bark translator that deciphers Notaro’s and her husband’s own “woofs” a little too accurately, the emails from her mother with “FWD” in the subject line (“which in email code means Forecasting World Destruction”), and the dead-of-night shopping sprees and Devil Dog–devouring monkeyshines of a creature known as “Ambien Laurie.”
At every turn, Notaro’s pluck and irresistible candor sets the New York Times bestselling author on a journey that’s laugh-out-loud funny and utterly unforgettable.
Advance words for It Looked Different on the Model:
BOOKLIST:
Along with cohorts “Ambien Laurie” and “Laurie Circa 1994,” Notaro endures both the indignities and the victories to be found in everyday life. Granted, hers take place in a world in which nefarious neighbors brazenly steal the plants right off her porch, and every e-mail from her mother begins “Fwd: Fwd: Fwd.”
Though she manages to take things pretty much in stride, it isn’t always easy for a Brooklyn girl plunked down in the middle of hippie-organic Eugene, Oregon, where recycling is a religion, and deep-fried anything is a sin on a par with greed, sloth, and gluttony. Yet whether she’s bidding on a vintage stove on eBay or writhing out of an inaccurately sized designer blouse in a chic boutique, Notaro approaches each situation with her trademark blend of sharp cynicism, healthy skepticism, and self-effacing humanism. The result is an earthy collection of slices of life easily recognized by anyone who has ever gone toe-to-toe
with a bossy postal clerk or a recalcitrant relative. — Carol Haggas
PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY:
Trying to fit in--sometimes literally--can be daunting, but Notaro's attempts are hilariously captured in this collection. In "Let It Bleed," Notaro (Spooky Little Girl) takes on the bane of women everywhere: trying on clothes in a dressing room, with lighting ranges from "cruel" to "barbaric." In "She's a Pill," it's not a physical hurdle Notaro must overcome but a mental one: her alter ago, "Ambien Laurie," who emerges when Notaro takes the sleeping pill that can cause people to act strangely in their sleep--Notaro binges on junk food like a zombie and watches dreadful movies. Her relationship with her staunchly Republican parents, who live in Phoenix, Ariz., and are still dismayed that Notaro moved to Eugene, Ore., is most notably described in "It's a Bomb," when she flies in for her mother's birthday. Notaro regresses to rebellious daughter and her parents to their old overbearing selves, complete with Notaro's obsessively clean mother telling her, "[I]f you're going to shed [in the shower], pick it up. Hair makes me gag." Notaro's humor is self-deprecating without ever swaying into self-pity, and her situations are both specific and universal. (July)
BOOKPAGE:
The idiot girl sleeps tonight
Review by Heather Seggel
Idiot Girls and other fans of writer Laurie Notaro most likely know what they’re getting themselves into with her latest collection, It Looked Different on the Model. This reader’s first warning sign came when the table of contents provoked a laugh attack that very nearly resulted in coffee out the nose. Things only got more perilous—and hilarious—from there.
Notaro and her husband recently relocated from Phoenix to Eugene, Oregon, and many of the pieces here reflect the culture shock of being surrounded by so many eccentrics. It’s not just the woman who takes out one breast at a picnic despite there being no hungry infant within a half-mile radius, or the young man discovered napping on Notaro’s lawn with a line of ants traversing his face. As if that weren’t enough, all her husband’s friends are graduate-level English majors! Just try being Anna Nicole Smith for Halloween in that crowd: blank stares all around.
The eccentricity doesn’t limit itself to humans, either. When her dog’s shrieking becomes overwhelming, Notaro buys a bark translator to better understand its needs. Suddenly modest, the dog won’t perform on cue, leading to a bark-off between Notaro and her husband, followed by competitive analysis of the translations. At least she bought the device while conscious; one of the funniest pieces here is about Notaro’s adventures with Ambien, combining sleep with online shoe-shopping and eating Devil Dogs in bed. Buyer’s remorse? Eater’s remorse? Ha. “There was just no contest. I like sleeping, so if a Twinkie or Devil Dog had to die every now and then at the hands of a teeth-gnashing night-eater, I was cool with that.”
Each piece stands on its own, but they’re even funnier together, since Notaro will build on the premise of one essay in another. For instance, we know she takes Ambien and wanders the halls eating snack foods, so when her husband starts finding little star-shaped chocolate imprints on his pillowcase, she’s certainly the most obvious suspect. When she catches the perpetrator in the act, it’s priceless . . . and disgusting. No spoilers here; read for yourself, but wait half an hour after eating, lest you literally bust a gut laughing.