It Looked Different on the Model

Everyone's favorite Idiot Girl, Laurie Notaro, is just trying to find the right fit, whether it's in the adorable blouse that looks charming on the mannequin but leaves her in a literal bind or in her neighborhood after she's shamefully exposed at a holiday party by delivering a low-quality rendition of "Jingle Bells." Notaro makes misstep after riotous misstep as she tries (and catastrophically fails) to gain some ground—delightfully whipping up butter-laden cupcakes for the local vegan kids, finding herself banned from the post office for wanting too many two-cent stamps ("The post-office lady looked at me like I had just asked her if she wanted to buy my sex tape"), and discovering what appears to be a corpse on her front lawn seconds before her sister is due to visit ("I had approximately three to four minutes to move the carcass from my yard into my neighbors' yard so my sister would think it was their dead person"). She shares tales of marriage and family, including stories about the dog-bark translator that deciphers Notaro's and her husband's own "woofs" a little too accurately, the emails from her mother with "FWD" in the subject line ("which in email code means Forecasting World Destruction"), and the dead-of-night shopping sprees and Devil Dog–devouring monkeyshines of a creature known as "Ambien Laurie."

At every turn, Notaro's pluck and irresistible candor sets the New York Times bestselling author on a journey that's laugh-out-loud funny and utterly unforgettable.