Colorado Parks & Wildlife Research Library

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-died shirts because their hippie...

Focuses on the author's haphazard efforts to fit into her ultra-liberal Oregon community, an endeavor marked by everything from stolen trees and a ban from the post office to dental implants and closed neighborhood parties.

"Laurie Notaro has proved everyone wrong: she didn’t end up in rehab, prison, or cremated at a tender age. She just went gray. At past fifty, every hair’s root is a symbol of knowledge (she knows how to use a landline), experience (she rode in a car with no seat belts), and superpowers (a gray-haired lady can get away with anything). Though navigating midlife is initially upsetting—the cracking noises coming from her new old body, receiving...

Notaro recounts her best efforts, and hilarious failures, in keeping a household inches away from being condemned. After all, home wasn't built in a day.