Stand-up comedian, writer and actress Tig Notaro's slim, harrowing and unashamedly emotional memoir, I'm Just a Person, focuses on a series of devastating blows she was dealt over a four-month period in 2012--beginning when she was hospitalized with clostridium difficile colitis (C. diff), a bacterial infection that is often fatal. Days after leaving the hospital, Notaro discovered her mother had fallen, hit her head and was now in a coma, being kept alive just long enough until she and her brother could fly home. A few weeks after the funeral, Notaro was diagnosed with invasive stage II breast cancer and told she needed a double mastectomy.
Nine days after her diagnosis, Notaro (who's appeared on Inside Amy Schumer and Transparent) was back on stage at a comedy club. Instead of doing her familiar material, she decided to talk about her cancer. Fearing it could be her last stand-up, she asked a friend to record it. The next morning, she was trending on Twitter and Rolling Stone magazine wanted to interview her. Comedian Louis C.K. convinced her to sell audio downloads of her show on his popular website. It earned her a Grammy nomination. "I certainly never imagined that success would arrive in tandem with stress, mourning, and a deadly disease," she writes.
Artist Tony Achilles provides excellent illustrations throughout the book, but there are few laughs in Notaro's memoir about grief, mortality and unexpected success. Her writing, however, is so concise, thoughtful and revealing, readers won't miss them any more than they did in Steve Martin's Born Standing Up or Joan Rivers's Enter Talking. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant