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  • Published: 29 May 2007
  • ISBN: 9780812975727
  • Imprint: Ballantine
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $36.99

There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell

A Novel of Sewer Pipes, Pageant Queens, and Big Trouble



For her legion of IDIOT GIRL fans, as well as readers looking for a female Christopher Moore, or a slightly bawdy, Gen X Fannie Flagg.

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

  • Published: 29 May 2007
  • ISBN: 9780812975727
  • Imprint: Ballantine
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $36.99

About the author

Laurie Notaro

Laurie Notaro has never written for Rolling Stone, Esquire, Harper's, The New Yorker, Lowrider, American Logger, Farm Show, or McSweeney's. She lives, and will probably die, in Phoenix, Arizona. Miraculously, this is her second book.

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Praise for There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell

"She may be the funniest writer in this solar system." -- Miami Herald

"Notaro is everywoman. She is every woman who has ever made a bad judgment, overindulged (you pick the vice), been on a fad diet, been misunderstood at work, been at odds with her mother or been frustrated with her grandmother's obsession with Lifetime TV, while somehow being a little too familiar with the conflicted, star-crossed personages of those movies." -- San Antonio Evening News