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From the acclaimed filmmaker, artist, and bestselling author of No One Belongs Here More Than You, a spectacular debut novel that is so heartbreaking, so dirty, so tender, so funny--so Miranda July--readers will be blown away. Here is Cheryl, a tightly-wound, vulnerable woman who lives alone, with a perpetual lump in her throat. She is haunted by a baby boy she met when she was six, who sometimes recurs as other people's babies. Cheryl is also obsessed with Phillip, a philandering board member at the women's self-defense non-profit where she works. She believes they've been making love for many lifetimes, though they have yet to consummate in this one. When Cheryl's bosses ask if their twenty-one-year-old daughter Clee can move into her house for a little while, Cheryl's eccentrically-ordered world explodes. And yet it is Clee--the selfish, cruel blond bombshell--who bullies Cheryl into reality and, unexpectedly, provides her the love of a lifetime. Tender, gripping, slyly hilarious, infused with raging sexual fantasies and fierce maternal love, Miranda July's first novel confirms her as a spectacularly original, iconic and important voice today, and a writer for all time. The First Bad Man is dazzling, disorienting, and unforgettable.
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Miranda July has always seemed to be the type of person you either love or hate. I’ve always been fond of her quirky weirdness and outlandish eccentricities, both in writing and in film. Admittedly, it took me a very long time to pick this up, even though I thoroughly enjoyed “No One Belongs Here More than You”, most of my trepidation came from the accolades and high praise that Dunham gave it, because I don’t care for her and it’s a dislike that tends to spoil everything within a few feet of it. I picked it up finally and finished it in two days’ time.
I have heard/seen that many people didn’t find the characters developed or relatable, which lead them to not care about them, thus running the book or resulting in them just abandoning it altogether; this wasn’t necessarily the case for me. I grew to care very much for Cheryl, Clee, and Jack. Cheryl is strange and fascinating and I drifted between admiration and empathy for her and her situation. In a disjointed sort-of way I related the most with her, and her views in relation to motherhood and all its messiness. As someone who felt disconnected and ‘outside’ while pregnant lacking that overwhelming joy about the whole thing, there were a good many things Cheryl said and felt that resonated with me. In short, I didn’t find them unlikable or despicable. At times they acted in unlikable and despicable ways, but it was also in very human ways.
In that same vein there were many other characters within the story that fell to the wayside for me. I didn’t give a fig about Philip and found that their interactions (Philip & Cheryl) were distracting and didn’t serve much purpose to the story. The big ‘shock’, if that’s what it was supposed to be, didn’t land and left the ending feeling a bit thrown together and unsatisfying.
Overall, I liked it. I would recommend it to anyone I knew that liked Miranda July or her form of storytelling. She appeals to a certain demographic, and I don’t blame, nor am I surprised that this isn’t everyone’s cuppa.
0Still not sure what I have just read. This book did not speak to me they way it clearly does to other people.
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