EXCUSE ME WHILE I DISAPPEAR

A journalist and bestselling author reflects on being a 50-something “girl gone gray” in a series of hilarious personal essays.

Notaro, the author of three novels and numerous essay collections, begins her latest in a state of wonderment: Somehow, five decades of hard living had not managed to land her “in rehab, prison, or an urn.” Her roots looked like “someone had clearly poured powdered sugar on my head,” and her midlife had rendered her socially and sexually invisible. As the author shows, getting older is not easy, even for a hardened, punk rock–loving Gen Xer like Notaro, who had survived everything from Hamburger Helper to Aqua Net. She now had to deal with new challenges, including vanishing eyebrow hair; sagging breasts and ankles that “look like a python who snuck out of its cage at a pet store and paid a visit to a colony of rats”; and making grown-up decisions like taking an office job with the benefits she needed for her ill husband, a job in which she and other graying women were constantly ignored by younger colleagues. Turning 50 also meant a colonoscopy for a body that had already endured years of medical indignities, including gynecologists coming at her “with ultrasound-enabled dildo[s]” or radiologists sandwiching her chest on equipment that transformed breasts into “the center of a plexiglass panini.” Musing on the aging process itself, Notaro wonders at the irony of being told about the facts of life before she understood what they meant, then being left in middle age to watch her body change and hormones die “like they’re on a muddy battlefield in France in 1917.” Witty and full of sarcastic energy, the author fearlessly tackles what it means to get old not only as a modern woman, but as a member of the “coolest”—if at times clueless—generation of the late 20th century.

Unplugged, refreshingly off the hook, and consistently entertaining.