There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell: A Novel of Sewer Pipes, Pageant Queens, and Big Trouble [Paperback]

Laurie Notaro (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 29, 2007

The first novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Idiot Girls’ Action-Adventure Club is a rollicking tale of small-town peculiarity, dark secrets, and one extraordinary beauty pageant.

When her husband is offered a post at a small university, Maye is only too happy to pack up and leave the relentless Phoenix heat for the lush green quietude of Spaulding, Washington. While she loves the odd little town, there is one thing she didn’t anticipate: just how heartbreaking it would be leaving her friends behind. And when you’re a childless thirtysomething freelance writer who works at home, making new friends can be quite a challenge.

After a series of false starts nearly gets her exiled from town, Maye decides that her last chance to connect with her new neighbors is to enter the annual Sewer Pipe Queen Pageant, a kooky but dead-serious local tradition open to contestants of all ages and genders. Aided by a deranged former pageant queen with one eyebrow, Maye doesn’t just make a splash, she uncovers a sinister mystery that has haunted the town for decades.

“[Laurie Notaro] may be the funniest writer in this solar system.”
–The Miami Herald

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Humorist Notaro (The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club, etc.) transitions to fiction with a comic mix of wife lit and smalltown suspense. When Maye Roberts's husband, Charlie, gets a tenure-track job at prestigious Spaulding University, childless, 30-something Maye leaves her tight-knit group of friends and job as a Phoenix reporter to move to the school's eponymous Washington State burg. While Charlie fits in easily, Maye, after a faculty dinner run-in with Dean Spaulding's wife, Rowena, feels lonely and bored. When she learns about the Sewer Pipe Queen pageant, a local tradition that guarantees the winner a town full of friends, she enters with her singing dog, inflaming Rowena further. As tensions thicken, Maye's rather notorious pageant sponsor, Ruby, may hold the key to Rowena's continuing rage and to the decades-old incident that sparked it. Though some of the plot falls flat, Notaro makes Maye's perspective strong enough to hold the story together, and the book is filled with the same winningly acerbic riffs that drive Notaro's popular essays. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

Fans of humorist Notaro will certainly want to pick up her first try at fiction. Readers unfamiliar with her earlier essay collections, e.g., Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club and Autobiography of a Fat Bride, should prepare to laugh loudly and often at her irreverent observations and depictions of life's embarrassing moments. Phoenix reporter-turned-freelance writer Maye relocates with her professor husband to an eccentric college town in the Pacific Northwest. But she has a hard time fitting into the close-knit community and an even harder time making friends. Enter the Sewer Pipe Queen Pageant, a piano-playing Australian shepherd, and a chain-smoking pageant coach, who memorably gives the following advice: "You're fighting a battle of good and evil with your dog pimp! Your only weapon is the shimmy! There is power in the shimmy! Make him fear your shimmy!" Recommended for public libraries and academic libraries with large fiction collections. --Amy Watts, Univ. of Georgia Lib., Athens -- Library Journal April 1, 2007

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Villard (May 29, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812975723
• ISBN-13: 978-0812975727
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (77 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #84,379 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Laurie Notaro was born in Brooklyn, New York, then spent the remainder of her formative years in Phoenix, AZ, where she created something of a checkered past. She is the New York Times Best-selling author of the humor memoirs The Idiot Girls Action Adventure Club, Autobiography of a Fat Bride, I Love Everybody and Other Atrocious Lies, We Thought You Would Be Prettier, Idiot Girls' Christmas, There's a Slight Chance I Might Be Going to Hell, The Idiot Girls and the Flaming Tantrum of Death, and Spooky Little Girl, which will be available April 13, 2001. She is a terrible typist, doesn't suffer Big Ikes very well, and lives under an assumed name in Eugene, Oregon where her neighbors believe she is writing about them, but she is not. She has a cute dog, a nice husband and misses Mexican food like a limb lost to diabetes.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Absurd . . . But Pure Laurie Notaro, June 30, 2007

By 

Michele Cozzens "www.michelecozzens.com" (Cloud 8) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell: A Novel of Sewer Pipes, Pageant Queens, and Big Trouble (Paperback)

Change the names, create an absurd little scenario, and call it fiction. As a fan of Notaro's essay collections, this story, "There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell," didn't surprise or disappoint. It doesn't stretch too far from her roots in writing first person vignettes about a funny, irreverent woman, however, the woman in this story happens to be named "Maye." Maye is clearly a Laurie alter ego, and it helped to have read her earlier collections to get a full picture of this likeable, humble creature.

Maye and her husband, Charlie, move from Phoenix, Arizona to Spaulding, Washington, because of her husband's new job. The plot centers on Maye's insatiable quest to make new friends. She is very unsuccessful--mistaking a coven of witches for a book group, infiltrating a meeting of vegetarians only to be busted eating meat later that night, and making a fool of herself at her first faculty gathering by getting stuck in her sweater and doing a striptease of sorts. She makes an enemy of the town matriarch, Rowena Spaulding, and her postman, who makes it necessary for her to take her dog, Mickey, to obedience training. Ultimately, Maye decides to win friends by attempting to win the annual "Miss Sewer Pipe" crown. She obtains a sponsor, the mysterious former Queen, Ruby Spicer, and as their friendship develops, the story grows more interesting. In spite of all the characters bantering back and forth in overly clever repartee and an annoying abundance of similes, I couldn't help but turn the pages just to see how the town pageant would unfold.

No great piece of literature, but fans of Laurie Notaro will love this book, and I applaud the author for giving "fiction" a crack, even though according to her acknowledgements, she seemed forced into it. Just keep writing Laurie. You make us laugh.

Michele Cozzens is the author of Irish Twins

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You will NOT be disappointed, June 1, 2007

By 

Tina Albrecht (Mesa, AZ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell: A Novel of Sewer Pipes, Pageant Queens, and Big Trouble (Paperback)

Ms. Notaro's first work of fiction is a hit! A great summer read. Fans of her earlier works will see a little bit of the author in the main character of the book, Maye Roberts, a lonely transplant to the tiny town of Spaulding, Washington. You will laugh out loud at Maye's antics on her quest to make a friend in this tight knit community with a secret in its past. I loved this book, and I think you will, too.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is one funny woman, May 31, 2007

By 

Nancy Ragghianti "Princess of Trouble" (Eugene, OR) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell: A Novel of Sewer Pipes, Pageant Queens, and Big Trouble (Paperback)

Once again, Laurie Notaro makes us laugh to the point of incontinence. This is her first work of fiction, and hopefully won't be her last. Her non-fiction work is well-known to millions, and this book will not disappoint those loyal fans. You'll laugh, you'll cry from laughing, you'll recommend this book to your friends.