I chose this book purely for the title. I mean, does it get any better than that? There were portions that were absolutely hilarous, laugh out loud funny. Some of it was a bit more crude than it really needed to be. While I identified with the crazy things that happened to the main character, I really didn't like her all that much. She is so very obsessed with making friends. It's a bit of an anathema to me, someone so averse to the pleasure of her own company. Not that there is a thing in the world wrong with having friends. But, desperation never bodes well. It is ultimately a very tender story. Loved that Ruby Spicer!

This book gets two stars (instead of one) because I actually managed to read the whole thing. I've never read anything by Laurie Notaro before but picked this up because I was in the mood for something fun and light.

Well, fun and light is what this book is supposed to be and it probably is for most readers. However, this book gets two starts (instead of three) because several scenes were a little too slapsticky for my tastes. I started to get bored reading about Maye's ridiculous and desperate attempts to make friends. Maybe I'm just too unsociable to empathize. Instead of laughing at her efforts (which were supposed to be funny), I rolled my eyes. A lot of Notaro's depictions of the wacky townspeople are stereotypical and almost cliche in their attempted zaniness.

The story picked up about a hundred pages (!) in when Maye finally decided to enter the pageant and began hunting down the vanished former pageant queen she wanted as a sponsor. The mystery aspect of the story spurred me forward although I was by no means biting my fingernails and sitting at the edge of my seat.

Disappointingly, the entire last chapter is one giant plot dump It's a complete summary, most of it given in dialogue. That, among many other aspects of the story, just didn't work for me.

Notaro's writing style uses lots of unusual and long-winded comparisons and similes. Again, it's supposed to be humorous. I can think of a few friends who would probably appreciate it more than I do.

Notaro is able to crossover from writing humorous nonfiction essays to a humorous novel, but there are definitely some plot holes in this story. To avoid a spoiler, let me just say that the ending drove me nuts. Other than a few obvious shortcomings, this novel was a really fun read. Notaro does a good job at bringing the reader along for the ride to a quirky town in the Pacific Northwest. Many of the characters are endearing and the story takes a few fun twists. This book is good for an entertaining and funny read.

This book was so fun. I love the main character, I love that she's fat and comes off as kind of strange and screws up, and laughs at herself all the way through. I also loved the setting in fictional Spaulding, Washington that contains a great many of the quirky, weird things that make the Northwest unique. Spaulding, Washington seemed to me like a condensed version of this region, with all the best and strangest things in this one town (hippies, witches, unicycles, organic bakeries and styrofoam recycling day that is more like a city holiday).

First off, let me just say that I love Laurie Notaro. I've read and loved four of her previous books, and find just about every short story she writes completely hilarious. With this in mind, I was really excited to read this book, her first experiment with fiction - I figured if the nonfiction stories Notaro wrote nearly made me pee myself laughing, just imagine what she could write if she were allowed to make everything up!
And that's the problem: Laurie Notaro's first novel is about a woman named Maye, who works as a freelance writer and used to be a reporter, adjusting to life in small-town Washington after moving there from Phoenix with her English-professor husband and their dog. For anyone who has read even one other Laurie Notaro book, this is starting to sound very familiar. Also, in the about-the-author section of There's a Slight Chance I Might Be Going to Hell it says that Notaro "recently moved Eugene, Oregon, a town that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the fictional town of Spaulding, Washington." Uh huh. Amusing as that is, Laurie, that doesn't excuse the fact that very little of your novel appears to be genuinely fictitious. As I read through the book, it was so easy to see which parts of the story were real, which parts were exaggerated, and what was made up. From my point of view, there was very little in that last category. In fact, it made me wonder if the stories in Notaro's nonfiction books are really all true, because they were so blatantly similar to everything that happens in her "fictional" story.
One more thing bugged me, and it may have been in Notaro's other books too, but this was the first time I noticed it: she has a habit of going out of her way to create awkwardly long, nonsensical similes that seem really out of place and forced. For example: "Crawford Lake Road was not paved, and not only was it a bumpy dirt road, it was full of potholes that looked more like spots where meteors had bounced off the face of the earth the way a basketball inevitably rebounds off the head of the fat girl in freshman gym class." And: "her eyes got wider and her expression took on the proportions of a teenager in a Wes Craven film who had just had dirty sex with her horn-dog boyfriend and was about to get her head ripped off her body like a grapefruit plucked from a tree by a psychopath." There you have it: not one, but two examples of similes-within-similes. And you thought it couldn't be done. (and yes, they're similes, not metaphors. I looked it up.) Those aren't the only examples I could find, but I'll spare you the rest.
In conclusion: there is nothing wrong with writing what you know, but Laurie Notaro, gifted as she is with funny prose, seems incapable of doing anything else.

This book was funny and entertaining but very far-fetched. What are the chances one woman is going to encounter a crazy mailman, an environmental loving pageant queen, elderly women on motorized scooters singing show-tunes, overzealous vegetarians, a drunken dinner date, and of course a villain all in just a few short months? And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! This book definitely had crazy characters, but I guess that's what helped to make it funny. If you are looking for something light hearted, this is a good choice. It would be a great book for taking along to the beach.

The fact that the main character was a chubby gal made me love her in the first chapter. It is so rare to come across a story where a fat person main character is living as a fat person and being fat isn’t the main focus of the book, it is just a passing detail.

This book was a fun, light hearted story about making friends later and life and how awkward/embarrassing/failure prone it can be.

I thought that some of her descriptions of events went on for too long, like a joke being told one too many times, which slowed the momentum of the story for me. It was kind of stereotypey-mom humor and I preferred the end half much more then the beginning. Other than that, I enjoyed this book and did in fact cry while reading the final chapters on the train.

Line responsible for my tears: “It really was like an eighth grade dream come true.”

Also there was random magic at the end irdk…

Some of the best characters you'll ever meet are in the pages of this book. Super rich language full of twisted metaphors, I wish I could jump in and spend a day with Maye, Ruby, and various other nutballs in their fictitious town. Goddamn war shimmy and all - I LOVED this book.

Apparently, I liked Notaro's nonfiction a little bit better, because I gave The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club a 3. Her foray into fiction can be summed up as: meh. The problem is that Notaro is not as funny as she thinks she is. In fact, at times it seems as though she must have smoked a little somethin' somethin' (or eaten one of the drug-like organic doughnuts that appear in the book) before writing certain chapters.

I certainly could identify with the premise of the story: Maye moves to a new town because her husband took an academic position, and suddenly she has no friends. (Yep, that sounds familiar.) Because she strikes out with everyone from the mailman to her husband's colleagues, Maye decides to enter the Sewer Pipe Queen Pageant in order to meet people -- and in the process, she stumbles onto a secret that has been kept for 50 years. It was harmless mind-fluff, but overall just not very good. Notaro, just like the Sweet Potato Queens, should stick to exaggerated nonfiction and leave novels to real writers.

I read this when it first hit the shelves in 2007, and then I read every book I could find written by Laurie Notaro . I laughed so much while reading this, people on the train wanted the title. I fave it to many friends. Thank you for making us laugh, Laurie

This is the first book by author Laurie Notaro that I've read, and it certainly won't be my last. This writing is downright hilarious and the plot unique. What a refreshing and laugh filled read. I was slightly disappointed with the ending, however, as I found it pretty anti-climatic compared with the rest of the book. Still, this was a heck of a ride and I'm looking forward to reading more by this author.

After moving to a small town, Maye discovers what many of us whose lives get uprooted discover: it's difficult to make new friends. I related to the theme, and it kept me reading to the end, but all the while I was hoping it got better. I enjoy a light read now and again, but the phrase "white people's problems" kept running through my head while reading this. As some other commenters mentioned, the similes do seem forced (like, enough to make your gag reflex react at times), and they take away from rather than add to the funny. Less is more.