I'm Just a Person

May 30, 2016
For four months in 2012, stand-up comedian Notaro descended into a decidedly unfunny period of her life: she survived a bout with the life-threatening bacterial infection, Clostridium difficile, only to find out that her mother had died; not long after she buried her mother, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and underwent a double mastectomy. In this deeply captivating memoir, Notaro opens her raw wounds, candidly sharing her most intimate thoughts about life before and after her illnesses. Notaro chronicles her early struggles with her mother and stepfather, and her departure from her home in Houston to make it on her own in Los Angeles. She discovers her gift for comedy, performing night after night at open mikes, and eventually lands an audition for a show that the comic Sarah Silverman has written just for Notaro. In a moment of uncertainty, she panics and exclaims "I'll go on, I can't go on," a theme that echoes throughout the book: "When you're struggling to secure the role of yourself, you do wonder whether you know who you are. Up until that audition, I felt confident I did." After her illnesses, Notaro slowly returns to the stage, gaining a large following when she introduces her new routine with the words: "Hello. Good evening. Hello. I have cancer, how are you?" By January 2013, Notaro feels reborn and ready to set out on a new life, and these days she's happier than ever. Notaro's searingly honest and sometimes humorous memoir will wrench readers' hearts and inspire them in equal measure.

January 1, 2016
Over four fraught months in 2012, stand-up comic Notaro was hospitalized for a debilitating intestinal disease, lost her mother, broke up with her partner, and received a bilateral breast cancer diagnosis. She famously dealt with her grief by creating a blunt and funny comedy set. Closing speaker at the Public Library Association Meeting in April 2016.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2016

Over four fraught months in 2012, stand-up comic Notaro was hospitalized for a debilitating intestinal disease, lost her mother, broke up with her partner, and received a bilateral breast cancer diagnosis. She famously dealt with her grief by creating a blunt and funny comedy set. Closing speaker at the Public Library Association Meeting in April 2016.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2016
A stand-up comic and writer's year from hell.When Notaro received antibiotics for a case of pneumonia, she didn't know she was embarking on months of health and family disasters. The drugs gave her a difficult and debilitating intestinal disease called C. diff, which caused her to lose more than 20 pounds and experience terrible abdominal pain. In the same time period, she lost her mother to an unexpected home accident. Then, after months of delay, she finally decided to examine the lump in her breast that she'd detected two years earlier, only to be told she had breast cancer in both breasts. At this extremely low point in her life, Notaro walked on stage and delivered brand-new material, opening with lines about her cancer. Once the audience realized she wasn't joking, she writes, it was then "her job as a comedian to get every silenced, stunned person back to laughing....I made it my mission to yank everyone out of the dark hole by delivering a lighter joke or asking why they were taking this so hard--which caused the laughter that we all needed." She received a standing ovation, and her career skyrocketed even as she faced a double mastectomy, the ongoing grief of her mother's passing, and a broken romance. As she unfolds the intimate moments of her personal annus horribilis, Notaro intermingles laugh-out-loud moments from her childhood with her crazy mother and stepfather and sweet romantic times as an adult. Throughout her brief work, the author is frank, at times humorous, and anything but melodramatic. She shows readers the full spectrum of her emotional and physical conditions, her vulnerability, and ultimately her strength as she enters a happier and healthier stage in her life. Forthright and private moments are revealed as a stand-up comedian uses her gift of creating laughter to overcome personal and physical disasters.

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May 1, 2016
Notarowho famously addressed her comedy-show audience, Hi, how are you? Is everyone having a good time? I have cancer embraces dark and darkly funny moments in life. She begins her memoir just two hours after her mom died, offering an unnervingly graphic description of her demise and a rueful tribute: Drinking with friends by the pool was my mother's 9 to 5 job, and she took it very seriously. The obviously whip-smart Tig (a childhood nickname that stuck) was no fan of school and failed eighth grade, twice. What she excels at is processing raw truths, which is how she describes her very-public cancer reveal. When Louis CK convinces her to release a recording of the show as an album, she titles it Live, as in the verb that means to keep not dying, partly because she loves the idea of correcting people who mispronounce it. She fights the disease with a bilateral double mastectomy; then at the ripe, young age of 45, marries a 30-year-old woman. Notaro's many wise and vivid observations include her thoughts on how heightened circumstances, such as overlapping tragedy and success, sharpen your vision and shorten your patience for baloney and hogwash. Notaro's thrilling, candid, and hilarious memoir is a provocative and convincing rallying cry to seize the day.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)