This was rather disappointing, to be perfectly honest. I have read and bought five other books by Laurie Notaro and laughed my ass off on nearly every story/essay, but this book was lacking.

This (possibly) semi-autobiographical novelization about a couple moving from Arizona to Washington State details the hardships of being new in a rather close-knit small town. Not having any children, or a job, Maye Roberts tries everything she can think of to make new friends -- make ANY friends -- even going so far as to enter the town's annual Sewer Pipe Queen Pageant. To enter she must be sponsored by a former Queen, and after she enlists the help of a neighbor who fits the bill that sponsor is killed by a crazed racoon!

Maye's determination to find a sponsor, enter and win the pageant all to make friends and shove it in the face of the hateful wife of her husband's boss ought to be brimming with the typical Notaro charm and snark.

But it falls short.

Several of the incidents in the book were very familiar, and since her other books are autobiographical, lead me to believe she's merely changed a few facts and fleshed some bits of her own move to Washington in this book. But soon the familiar situations and jokes just weren't as funny as expected.

The storyline became tedious and trite. Normally I can't put Notaro down, she's so funny, but this one I trudged through. Think I'd recommend others to pick up The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club instead.

After the success of several collections of humourous essays, Notaro has turned her hand to fiction. This debut novel does not immediately grasp the reader in the same fashion as her previous books. It takes a little getting used to her narrative style, and the book as a whole is surprisingly uneven for a woman who has such polished essay collections. I think shifting the point-of-view would possibly make the book flow a bit smoother...

Still, the expected funny scenes are definitely present, and the story itself is surprisingly sweet. It offers a fun and entertaining break from daily life and is a joy to read. I am sure that her next foray into fiction will be even stronger!

My friend Jan read a bit from this at the Virtual Silent Book Club, and I knew I had to read it.

It’s delightfully funny, and it so captures some “small town” attitudes, as well as the feelings of a fish out of water, whose every attempt to make new friends goes hilariously astray. Oh, yeah, and there is a cold case mystery to be resolved, too.

I want to read everything Ms. Laurie Notaro (who is not, as far as I can make out, related to Tig Notaro) has written. Anyone whose book can keep me laughing and hold my attention for an entire day is someone whose writing is clearly worth pursuing!

Oh, Laurie, my wonderful, funny Laurie.... stick to memoirs, darlin'. That's what you're good at.

These reads like a novel based-on-fact, which may sound nutty in a book that involves a Sewer Pipe Queen pageant and spontaneous combustion. The thing is, so much of what "Maye" goes through in this book is what (or at least remarkably similar to) Laurie, herself, describes in her memoirs. Moving from the ghetto in Phoenix to the Pacific Northwest -- yep, Laurie did that. Working out of the houe and having a hard time making friends -- yeah, that sounds familiar. Having some crazy run-ins with the locals? Right. I know they say you should write what you know and Notaro absolutely did. Maybe it just all felt too familiar after reading her other work.

That said, what was obviously fiction seemed either totally far-fetched or incredibly trite. Woman enters contest to (among other things) spite someone who is nasty to her. She finds someone who hates this nasty woman just as much and is willing to help her win the contest. (I mean, really, she even used the totally overdone "I'm going to walk away after being rejected and mumble the name of this nasty person which is what will totally convince this other person to help me" bit.) This new-found enemy-of-my-enemy is a cranky old woman who is won over by the author and they become good friends. Oh, and don't forget the manual-labor-as-a-form-of-training, a la "The Karate Kid". As for the whodunit aspect: painfully predictable.

And what's with the similes?! Good GODS, woman! Maybe she did this in her other books too and I just didn't notice as much, but she compares so many things to other things in long, rambling sentences. Once in a while they're funny, but too many become annoying very quickly.

Disappointed. I so wanted to like this.