Already a darling of the indie avant-garde, performance artist and award-winning film director Miranda July now storms the literary ramparts with a collection of transcendent short fiction that adds luster to her reputation. Peppered with startling (and sometimes shocking) plot twists, the 16 stories in this anthology feature lonely misfits riddled with eccentricities, longing for connection, and desperate to invent some happiness in a world that throws up barriers at every turn. As she did so memorably in her art house hit Me and You and Everyone We Know, July forces us to see the humanity in people who are less than lovable, laying bare their vulnerabilities with exquisite and unexpected tenderness. With rave reviews from respected literati like Dave Eggars, Rick Moody, and George Saunders, this debut collection seems poised to make a big splash.
Sheelah Kolhatkar
… there are stories like “Something That Needs Nothing,” about two girls who run away together. This is July at her best — funny and insightful, offering moments of utter heartbreak through deeper, more sophisticated storytelling. The exploits of the narrator and her girlfriend, Pip, who “saw herself as a charming street urchin, a pet for wealthy mothers,” as they cope with a roach-infested apartment, break up and reconnect, are both tender and gripping. Even as the narrator discovers a talent for peeling off her clothes in a grimy peep-booth, one can’t help rooting for her, awkwardness and all.
— The New York Times
Publishers Weekly
It's a testament to July's artistry that the narrators of this arresting first collection elicit empathy rather than groans. "Making Love in 2003," for example, follows a young woman's dubious trajectory from being the passive, discarded object of her writing professor's attentions to seducing a 14-year-old boy in the special-needs class she teaches, while another young woman enters the sex industry when her girlfriend abandons her, with a surprising effect on the relationship. July's characters over these 16 stories get into similarly extreme situations in their quests to be loved and accepted, and often resort to their fantasy lives when the real world disappoints (which is often): the self-effacing narrator of "The Shared Patio" concocts a touching romance around her epilectic Korean neighbor; the aging single man of "The Sister" weaves an elaborate fantasy around his factory colleague Victor's teenage sister (who doesn't exist) to seduce someone else. July's single emotional register is familiar from her film Me and You and Everyone We Know, but it's a capacious one: wry, wistful, vulnerable, tough and tender, it fully accommodates moments of bleak human reversals. These stories are as immediate and distressing as confessionals. (May) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
A filmmaker (Me and You and Everyone We Know) and multimedia artist (www.learningtoloveyoumore.com), July brings her trademark whimsy to this debut story collection. The protagonists here are lonely dreamers, and what they dream about is often a little creepy: a territorial type, wondering whether she is getting her money's worth out of the patio she has to share, falls asleep while her neighbor has a seizure on the bench beside her; a middle-aged woman fantasizes about seducing Prince William to the sounds of Mike and the Mechanics; a disgruntled secretary goes to absurd lengths to befriend her boss's wife. Betrayals small and large seem to be the norm, and inappropriate sex abounds: student-teacher, therapist-patient, consensual incest, molestation. Some of these couplings are startling, but others are clich s that drag down an otherwise witty and unusual book. The best moments here are small-a spectacular failure in sewing class, an unexpected visit from a neighborhood boy, a lost dog named Potato-and as they accrue the collection becomes an exhilarating read.-Leora Bersohn, doctoral student, Columbia Univ., New York Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
An accomplished debut collection of 16 stories, simultaneously bizarre and achingly familiar. July wrote, directed and starred in the indie film Me and You and Everyone We Know, and the same slightly anguished humor informs these stories, peopled by misfits and loners not quite apprised of their own lowly status. The characters interact tentatively, inappropriately. They are dangerously lonesome people (despite their naive attempts to connect) who have a lot of awkward sex. In "The Sister," an old bachelor is fixed up by fellow factory worker Victor. Victor's sister Blanca is always just out of sight, misses dates, becomes the stuff of mythology between the two men-until it becomes clear on a drugged-out night what Victor's intentions really are. The longest of the collection, "Something That Needs Nothing," follows two lesbians after high-school graduation as they run away to Portland, Ore. There they rent a cockroach-infested studio and try to find work, preferably one servicing an older woman willing to support them. Things don't work out quite so dreamily, as one girl abandons the other to earn a living at Mr. Peeps Adult Video Store and More. "Mon Plaisir" traces a couple's decline from passionless (including some of the saddest sex possible-he "nurses" her while she masturbates) to mute, as they find they like each other more when they get work as extras in a movie. There are a number of evocative short pieces-a woman teaches some seniors how to swim, a teacher believes her teenage poltergeist lover has taken the form of one of her Special Ed students, a woman who has had a port-stain birthmark removed from her face wonders if her husband would love her if she still had it. Thestories have an otherworldly quality, but instead of being fantastical, they are emblematic of a modern loneliness in which the boundaries of normal behavior become useless, where the best that can be hoped for is a kind of aggressive voyeurism. A smart, original collection.
From the Publisher
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
OCT/NOV 08 - AudioFile
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
