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I've Got a New Complaint: Essays on Aging Disgracefully and Other Small Disasters

by Laurie Notaro

Middle age, family, and everyday absurdities

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AlbakiReads Editorial

Middle age, family, and everyday absurdities

Laurie Notaro’s essays gather the awkward collisions of middle age: becoming a caregiver to elderly parents while reckoning with her own aging, managing office politics, and navigating travel, reunions, retirement fantasies, and sex at sixty. Scottsdale, Arizona, serves as a return to the family home and to an earlier version of herself, now complicated by adult responsibilities. The collection’s subjects range from practical indignities to deliberately outlandish scenarios, with aging and the effort to retain agency linking its personal and comic episodes.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in memoir essays about aging and family caregiving.
  • Those who enjoy personal writing about work, travel, and the complications of midlife.
  • Readers seeking adult nonfiction that approaches everyday mishaps with humor.

Themes

Aging and midlifeFamily caregivingWorkplace conflictPersonal agencyEveryday absurdities

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

A brutally and hilariously unfiltered look at being middle-aged-plus in an absurd modern world by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Excuse Me While I Disappear.

Laurie Notaro can time travel. The portal is Scottsdale, Arizona. Once inside her elderly parents' home, she's a child again--who's two years away from collecting Social Security. Caught between generations, Laurie is young enough to be thrust into the role of caregiver yet old enough to be grappling with her own creaking bones and analog life skills. It's an awkward age.

Navigating it is just a matter of winging it. She runs rampant through Italy with her American driving skills. Infuriating office politics leave her little choice but revenge and some hexes. Laurie also confronts a high school bully at a reunion, considers an elaborate funeral at a puppet theater, and fancies an ideal retirement plan involving bank robbery. As for sex at sixty, honestly, it's a challenge. The parts are a little rusty (at least they sound that way).

Regardless of indignity or mishap, the #1 New York Times bestselling author finds agency with the sharp wit of a woman who refuses to go gently into that good night.

(c) 2026 by Laurie Ann Notaro, all rights reserved.

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