Notaro, Laurie: The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club

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Laurie Notaro's first book, The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club, includes nearly forty essays that were originally published in the author's humor column in the Arizona Republic. (Notaro's fifth book, An Idiot Girl's Christmas: True Tales from the Top of the Naughty List, was released in November 2005.) A self-described "idiot girl," apparently in her twenties when most of these essays were written, Notaro portrays herself as one of fortune's less favored. She is not, that is, one of those perky-breasted blondes whose clothes always fit right and who's engaged to a doctor, but rather the funny gal pal type, who's more often than not unwashed and underdressed, and more often than she should be under the table. Drinking and smoking apparently consume a good portion of Notaro's days, providing fodder for her humor--though it may be that many of the details of her allegedly misspent adulthood are exaggerated in her writing for comic effect. In either case, hopelessly straight laced suburban mother than I am, tales of nicotine and alcohol abuse tend not so much to amuse as to disturb me.

Happily, there's more to the book than substance abuse. And when Notaro turns from tales of drunkenness to, say, vaginal exams and maxi pads, she's laugh-out-loud funny. ("It was one of the darkest days of my life when that nurse, Mrs. Shimmer, pulled out a maxi pad that measured the width and depth of a mattress and showed us how to use it.") In fact, this book set me laughing a good many times, as, for example, when Notaro reprimands Monica Lewinski for the effect she's had on the author's grandmother:

"Now you see what you've done, Monica Lewinski, you stupid, stupid tart, I thought. Because of you, I have to explain to my nana, while she's in a hospital bed with an enlarged gallbladder, what oral sex is. Do you see the damage you've caused? Do you see where your sinful path has led?"

In addition to being funny, the essays included in the collection are strung together well so that they form a coherent narrative.

Now that I've gotten to know Notaro, so to speak, I'm eager to read more from her. I just hope that the next book or two will find her off the bottle and over the butts. Lung cancer and liver damage just aren't that funny.