Autobiography of a Fat Bride: True Tales of a Pretend Adulthood

By Laurie Notaro

Book Overview

The author of the New York Times bestseller The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club tackles her biggest challenge yet- grown-up life. In Autobiography of a Fat Bride , Laurie Notaro tries painfully to make the transition from all-night partyer and bar-stool regular to mortgagee with plumbing problems and no air-conditioning. Laurie finds grown-up life just as harrowing as her reckless youth, as she meets Mr. Right, moves in, settles down, and crosses the toe-stubbing threshold of matrimony. From her mother's grade-school warning to avoid kids in tie-dyed shirts because their hippie parents spent their food money on drugs and art supplies; to her night-before-the-wedding panic over whether her religion is the one where you step on the glass; to her unfortunate overpreparation for the mandatory drug-screening urine test at work; to her audition as a Playboy centerfold as research for a newspaper story, Autobiography of a Fat Bride has the same zits-and-all candor and outrageous humor that made Idiot Girls an instant cult phenomenon. In Autobiography of a Fat Bride , Laurie contemplates family, home improvement, and the horrible tyrannies of cosmetic saleswomen. She finds that life doesn't necessarily get any easier as you get older. But it does get funnier.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 037576092X
• ISBN13: 9780375760921
• Release Date: July 2003
• Publisher: Ballantine Group
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.48 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Some Day Idiot Girls Will Rule The World!

Laurie Notaro is my hero. She has a great writing style. Her stories are hilarious. I suggest every woman who has ever struggled to fit in and do the right thing to read her books.

Hysterical and Relatable

After reading this book, I had to get another one, then another one, and have since been slowly collecting Laurie Notaro's books. It was relatable, and laugh out loud funny - she has a way of writing that lets out her darkest secrets and horrible habits and most embarassing moments. Perhaps the best part of this book is "Good Guy," wherein she discusses her absolute astonishment and severe anxiety at the thought of having found a nice, stable man to settle down with, and keeping him interested (which begins with keeping him drunk throughout their dates, and progresses to her stuffing him with fried food). Another great segment was "Time Goes By," when she's waiting for her husband to arrive home, and watches the clock while going through anger, fear, panic and repeating, only to be horribly embarassed when he gets home (I won't tell you why, but it's one of the funniest parts of the book). While you can read the chapters as separate stories and jump around in the book, it is best read straight through - it gives you a much better idea of her world and the people in it as the book progresses.

Laurie Notaro rules!

I'm a 20-something who picked up my first Laurie Notaro book at a bookstore browsing the humor section. I read a chapter and laughed in the store. This book (as well as all Notaro's others) is consistently laugh out loud funny. I found her very relatable and easy to read. There is so much crap out there that's all too similar a read, and Notaro definitely distances herself from that. Her short chapters are a collection of humor, not another 20 or 30 something novel we've all read 80 different incarnations of. I cannot wait for more from her. If you're a female sick of the other of the other typical girlie-novels out there, Notaro is a most refreshing change of pace. And she is totally hilarious.

pee-in-your-pants funny

With another fabulous cover, Laurie Notaro's second book is funnier than the first, even though I wasn't sure that was possible. Now that she's married, she's cut back on the substance abuse, but she makes the details of grown-up life just as amusing and recognizable as she did life as a single idiot girl. As with Idiot Girls, Laurie writes for the rest of us--the ones who didn't get straight A's, who didn't get asked to Prom, who try to cover our rolls of fat with huge control top underwear a la Bridget Jones. A wonderful, wonderful book.