July's collection of stories is a gem of unconventional storytelling. Comparisons to Lorrie Moore only get the potential reader halfway there; one must add Karen Finley's meditations and Douglas Coupland's painful self-exploration. July's unadorned prose has a conversational tone, sounding like overheard bus conversations. The disaffected are well represented in such stories as "Something That Needs Nothing" and "The Swim Team," but July is at her best when she takes it a step further. The merely marginal individual borders on the grotesque in "Majesty," about a middle-aged woman's strange obsession with Prince William, and in "Mon Plaisir," with its odd and strangely removed discussion of a couple's odd sexuality. However, the most powerful piece in the collection, "This Person," is told by an unseen narrator. "Someone" gets--and rejects--"her one chance to be loved by everyone," and the story of this opportunity and how it is dismissed is told in a detached, dreamlike narrative. Debi Lewis
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
“These stories are swift aching, almost unbearably intense flares of emotion and lyrical language, sent out into the existential darkness of everyday life. July’s characters are orphans and runaways and misfits, insecure, lost and lonely, but they do their best to find that last remaining scintilla of strength in each other and in themselves.” —Time Magazine
“[July’s] worlds feel real and surreal and desperately sad and filled with what one character calls ‘secret joy,’ at the same time.” —The Seattle Times
“Who will Miranda July’s work appeal to? To borrow the name of her lovely first film, Me and You and Everyone We Know.” —Entertainment Weekly
“Miranda July is graced with an unabashed love for the basic humanity of her characters.” —The New York Observer
“[An] astonishingly good collection of short stories.” —Vogue
“Miranda July has a true intimacy with damaged hearts.” —Time Out New York
“Whimsical…extraordinary tales…at the core of each strange, often comic tale lies the basic human need for love and understanding.” —The Village Voice
“July is near perfect here, writing with empathy and sweetness and drawing humor from the itchily uncomfortable.” —Los Angeles Magazine
“Earnest, to tales of love.” —Slate
“July’s stories are sexy and fast… Her characters are a new lost generation.” —O, The Oprah Magazine
“July’s quicksilver fiction is always surprising, and it takes pains to remind us that, somehow, we all belong somewhere.” —The Miami Herald
“July’s tales roll out epiphanies so exquisite and bizarre, they’ll change the way you view life.” —Jane
“There is a marked new maturity in these stories—a determination not just to chronicle her characters’ obsessions and idiosyncrasies, but also to understand the purpose they serve.”—New York Magazine
“July has an unmistakable voice: earnest, funny, emotionally charged.” —Details
“Rich and lyrical…playful and devastating…wonderfully accessible yet undeniably poetic.” —Zink
“Devastatingly personal…curiously uplifting.”—The Salt Lake Tribune
“At once reflective, sexual, funny, and sad. It’s a non sequitur, but not nonsensical…Her writing exudes a (false) simplicity as contagious and dangerous a model in the hands of less capable writers as the works of Raymond Carver…These stories are marked by an imagination that conjures the incredible, renders it mundane (often through sex) and captures an emptiness of modern spirit.” —The Oregonian
“Touching on both the mundane and the provocative…[these stories] are written with July’s frank perspective and an emotional eye for detail.” —The Sacramento Bee
"These stories are incredibly charming, beautifully written, frequently laugh-out-loud funny, and even, a dozen or so times, profound. Miranda July is a very real writer, and has one of the most original voices to appear in fiction in many years. Fans of Lorrie Moore should rub this book all over themselves – she's got that perfect balance of humor and pathos. There has been no more enjoyable and promising a debut collection in many a moon." —Dave Eggers
"These delightful stories do that essential-but-rare story thing: they surprise. They skip past the quotidian, the merely real, to the essential, and do so with a spirit of tenderness and wonder that is wholly unique. They are (let me coin a phrase) July-esque, which is to say: infused with wonder at the things of the world." —George Saunders, author of Lincoln in the Bardo
"Miranda July's is a beautiful, odd, original voice – seductive, sometimes erotic, and a little creepy, too." —David Byrne
"A woman gives swimming lessons in her kitchen – of course! Miranda July can make anything seem normal in these truly original stories. She has first-rate comic timing and a generous view of the human condition. Maybe best of all, there's joy here, too, often where you would not expect to find it." —Amy Hempel, author of The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel
About the Author
Miranda July is a writer, filmmaker, and artist. Her debut novel, The First Bad Man, was an instant New York Times bestseller, and her collection of stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You, won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and has been published in twenty-three countries. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Harper’s, and The New Yorker, and she is also the author of the novel All Fours. July lives in Los Angeles.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
This Person
Someone is getting excited. Somebody somewhere is shaking with excitement because something tremendous is about to happen to this person. This person has dressed for the occasion. This person has hoped and dreamed and now it is really happening and this person can hardly believe it. But believing is not an issue here, the time for faith and fantasy is over, it is really really happening. It involves stepping forward and bowing. Possibly there is some kneeling, such as when one is knighted. One is almost never knighted. But this person may kneel and receive a tap on each shoulder with a sword. Or, more likely, this person will be in a car or a store or under a vinyl canopy when it happens. Or online or on the phone. It could be an e-mail re: your knighthood. Or a long, laughing, rambling phone message in which every person this person has ever known is talking on a speakerphone and they are all saying,You have passed the test, it was all just a test, we were only kidding, real life is so much better than that. This person is laughing out loud with relief and playing the message back to get the address of the place where every person this person has ever known is waiting to hug this person and bring her into the fold of life. It is really exciting, and it's not just a dream, it's real.
They are all waiting by a picnic table in a park this person has driven past many times before. There they are, it's everyone. There are balloons taped to the benches, and the girl this person used to stand next to at the bus stop is waving a streamer. Everyone is smiling. For a moment this person is almost creeped out by the scene, but it would be so like this person to become depressed on the happiest day ever, and so this person bucks up and joins the crowd.
Teachers of subjects that this person wasn't even good at are kissing this person and renouncing the very subjects they taught. Math teachers are saying that math was just a funny way of saying "I love you." But now they are simply saying it, I love you, and the chemistry and PE teachers are also saying it and this person can tell they really mean it. It's totally amazing. Certain jerks and idiots and assholes appear from time to time, and it is as if they have had plastic surgery, their faces are disfigured with love. The handsome assholes are plain and kind, and the ugly jerks are sweet, and they are folding this person's sweater and putting it somewhere where it won't get dirty. Best of all, every person this person has ever loved is there. Even the ones who got away. They hold this person's hand and tell this person how hard it was to pretend to get mad and drive off and never come back. This person almost can't believe it, it seemed so real, this person's heart was broken and has healed and now this person hardly knows what to think. This person is almost mad. But everyone soothes this person. Everyone explains that it was absolutely necessary to know how strong this person was. Oh, look, there's the doctor who prescribed the medicine that made this person temporarily blind. And the man who paid this person two thousand dollars to have sex with him three times when this person was very broke. Both of these men are in attendance, they seem to know each other. They both have little medals that they are pinning on this person; they are badges of great honor and strength. The badges sparkle in the sunlight, and everyone cheers.
This person suddenly feels the need to check her post office box. It is an old habit, and even if everything is going to be terrific from now on, this person still wants mail. This person says she will be right back and everyone this person has ever known says, Fine, take your time. This person gets in her car and drives to the post office and opens the box and there is nothing. Even though it is a Tuesday, which is famously a good day for mail. This person is so disappointed, this person gets back in the car and, having completely forgotten about the picnic, drives home and checks the voice mail and there are no new messages, just the old one about "passing the test" and "life being better." There are no e-mails, either, probably because everyone is at the picnic. This person can't seem to go back to the picnic. This person realizes that staying home means blowing off everyone this person has ever known. But the desire to stay in is very strong. This person wants to run a bath and then read in bed.
In the bathtub this person pushes the bubbles around and listens to the sound of millions of them popping at once. It almost makes one smooth sound instead of many tiny sounds. This person's breasts barely jut out of the water. This person pushes the bubbles onto the breasts and makes weird shapes with the foam. By now everyone must have realized that this person is not coming back to the picnic. Everyone was wrong; this person is not who they thought this person was. This person plunges underwater and moves her hair around like a sea anemone. This person can stay underwater for an impressively long time but only in a bathtub. This person wonders if there will ever be an Olympic contest for holding your breath under bathwater. If there were such a contest, this person would surely win it. An Olympic medal might redeem this person in the eyes of everyone this person has ever known. But no such contest exists, so there will be no redeeming. This person mourns the fact that she has ruined her one chance to be loved by everyone; as this person climbs into bed, the weight of this tragedy seems to bear down upon this person's chest. And it is a comforting weight, almost human in heft. This person sighs. This person's eyes begin to close, this person sleeps.
Copyright © 2007 by Miranda July
July's stories provoke and compel with their strange mix of self-actualization, sexuality, and emotion. Her topics range from capturing visceral moments in peoples' lives to portraying quixotic and ethereal tangents within the various characters. As narrator, July reads with a dry, slightly nasally tone that works perfectly for her motif. Her light monotone embodies the idea of moving through life without actually living it���a fear that lurks amid the stories. However, the drawback with July's approach is that it may take listeners several minutes to identify the characters in each new story since they are not well differentiated. L.E. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
