The First Bad Man: A Novel, by Miranda July
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The First Bad Man: A Novel, by Miranda July
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The instant New York Times bestseller is “astonishing…In one novel, Miranda July tells us more about our universal need to be loved, and our ability to love and be loved, than most earthbound authors will in a lifetime” (Vanity Fair).In The First Bad Man, Miranda July tells the story of Cheryl, a vulnerable, uptight woman in her early forties who lives alone, with a perpetual lump in her throat, unable to cry. Cheryl is haunted by a baby boy she met when she was six; she also believes she has a profound connection with Phillip, a philandering board member at Open Palm, the women’s self-defense studio where she has worked for twenty years. 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 teaches Cheryl what it means to love and be loved and, inadvertently, provides the solace of a lifetime. “Brilliant, hilarious, irreverent, piercing—The First Bad Man powers past sexual boundaries and gender identification into the surprising galaxy of primal connection” (O, The Oprah Magazine). This is a spectacularly original, unsettling, accomplished, and moving first novel with a tender and beguiling happy ending.
The First Bad Man: A Novel, by Miranda July - Amazon Sales Rank: #26075 in Books
- Brand: July, Miranda
- Published on: 2015-09-08
- Released on: 2015-09-08
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .70" w x 5.25" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 304 pages
The First Bad Man: A Novel, by Miranda July Amazon.com Review
An Amazon Best Book of the Month, January 2015: Cheryl Glickman is an employee at a self-defense nonprofit, an ironic profession once you get to know her. She lives alone, pickling in her eccentricities, and obsesses over a douchey co-worker with designs on much younger prey. If anyone needs the sense knocked into her, it is Cheryl, and lo and behold, an unwelcome and most unsanitary houseguest just might (literally) be up to the task. As Cheryl is taken outside of her comfort zone, you may be as well when reading Miranda July’s hilariously irreverent and oddly romantic novel, The First Bad Man. There are some outlandishly crude moments that belie what ends up being an achingly tender treatise on love and motherhood. It is a testament to July’s skill as a storyteller that she is able to make you laugh, cringe, and cry from one page to the next, and not only sympathize with a very unlikely heroine, but actually relate to her. Let your freak flags fly and enjoy. –Erin Kodicek
Review “Miranda July's ability to pervert norms while embracing what makes us normal is astounding. Writing in the first person with the frank, odd lilt of an utterly truthful character, she will make you laugh, cringe and recognize yourself in a woman you never planned to be. By the time July tackles motherhood, the book has become a bible. Never has a novel spoken so deeply to my sexuality, my spirituality, my secret self. I know I am not alone.” (Lena Dunham, author of Not That Kind of Girl)“With The First Bad Man, Miranda July provides an audaciously original, often hilarious map of the ever-expanding reach of unhinged imagination in America. With IMAX-scale emotional projections, a post-gay regimen of sexual fantasies, and a cast of riveting misfits worthy of Kurt Vonnegut, July takes us on a picaresque journey in which the heroine's ultimate challenge turns out to be a stunningly ordinary circumstance more transfixing than all the virtual caprices a 21st-century mind can muster.” (Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon and Far from the Tree)“Miranda July has created in her stories and here in her amazing debut novel something close to a new literary genre. If science fiction speculates on new technologies in human life, July imagines new emotions that have never been described. Anger is erotic. Pleasure feels like fear. Sex dynamites everything around it. And yet we can’t stop having it. Not since David Foster Wallace has a writer so hilariously captured the wince-worthy adventures of the awkward human beings we all pretend we aren’t.” (Mark Costello, author of Big If)“Miranda July's exciting and wild novel The First Bad Man begins deeply, absurdly funny, gets increasingly twisted and strange, and then ends quietly, urgently heartfelt. It is a novel about aging, about motherhood, about sex, about weird wounded women--yes--but it is really a novel about the desperate possibility in all of us to love and be loved. The First Bad Man is like no other novel you will read this year (or any other year).” (Dana Spiotta, author of Eat the Document and Stone Arabia)"Cheryl Glickman, Miranda July's heroine in this unforgettable novel, is one of the most original, most confounding and strangely sympathetic characters in recent fiction. She narrates this very intimate epic of a story -- a story that starts in a place of brittle, quirky, loneliness and progresses into a profoundly moving story of nontraditional love and commitment. This novel is almost impossible to put down, and confirms July as a novelist of the first order." (Dave Eggers, author of The Circle)“The ‘yes, that’s really the way it is!’ moments in this book came so fast and furious that I found myself page-turningly propelled into a story that, despite its subtly off-kilter course, somehow — I don’t know how — ended up revealing the invisible and depthless emotional reality that roils and tugs beneath us all. Miranda July’s protagonist inhabits this uncharted world of unspeakable desires, embarrassing hopes and shifting conquests more fully than any in contemporary fiction I can recall, and you will inhabit it right along with her. You will also inhabit her. And she, you. The First Bad Man is a strange miracle of a book, and despite the opinion of its main character, a truly great American love story for our time.” (Chris Ware, author of Building Stories)“July’s work reminds us that the essential storytelling tool is voice. Hers is smart, funny, twisted, vulnerable, humane, and reassuring: a dazzling human consciousness speaking frankly and fondly and directly to you. If I ever start to doubt the power of language and intelligence, I only have to read a few lines of July to have my faith restored.” (George Saunders, author of Tenth of December)“Miranda July's first novel announces something new, not only in its invention, characterization, and pace, but emotional truth. With it, the esteemed artist and filmmaker joins the front rank of young American novelists—and then surpasses them.” (Hilton Als, author of White Girls)“I am in awe of Miranda July. She is the person I want to be, the artist who feels free to work in any number of media, the artist who is so talented, expressive. The First Bad Man is a book that must be read, a book that must be purchased – in duplicate – one for you, one for a friend. Don’t think you can loan this book – you’ll never get it back.” (A. M. Homes, author of May We Be Forgiven)“July is brilliant, hilarious, irreverent, piercing—even cringe-inducing, powering past sexual boundaries and gender identification into the surprising galaxy of primal connection. ‘We all think we might be terrible people. But we only reveal this before we ask someone to love us. It is a kind of undressing.’ Is there a more hopeful statement about humankind? In Miranda July’s strange universe, probably not.” (Jayne Anne Phillips, O, The Oprah Magazine)“Lovelywriting is interspersed with outer-space levels of strange…yet gradually thiscatalog of the grotesque builds into something beautiful, and this deeply oddbook abruptly becomes transcendent. It feels like being on a plane when ittakes off—all that rattling, speed, and oil, and then suddenly:airborne.” (Molly Langmuir, Elle)“July’s work seems to grow deeperand more endearing with each iteration, while retaining its hysterical-neuroticcharms and crisp, colloquial wit. July’s first novel is a test of her range,which she ably passes. Single, middle-aged Cheryl Glickman expands from acollection of oddities — a baby obsession, a hallucinated ball in her throat,bizarre sexual fantasies — into someone with real longings, relationships, andopportunities for genuine growth and redemption.” (New York Magazine)“The First Bad Man isa disorienting mash-up of tongue-in-cheek social commentary, a celebration ofoddball anti-heroines, and an embarrassingly honest look at the obsessions andentitlements we all (subconsciously or not) carry with us. I found myselflaughing and cringing in equal measure, and even if I don’t totally understandeverything July is trying to say or do here, I’ve become a believer.” (Bustle)“Very funny… The novel exploded my expectations and became unlikeanything I’ve ever read…hilarious…like many of us, July seems to haveunbridled daydreams. Unlike most of us, she has wicked follow-through…July isexceptional at tracing the imaginative contours of sexuality… She is not afterperfection: She loves the raw edges of emotion, she likes people and things tobe a little worn. Life isn’t silky, July is saying. The snags and the snafusbring the joy…The First Bad Man makesfor a wry, smart companion on any day. It’s warm, it has a heartbeat and apulse. This is a book that is painfullyalive.” (Lauren Groff, The New York Times Book Review)"The first novel by thefilmmaker and artist Miranda July is like one of those strange mythologicalcreatures that are part one thing, part another — a griffin or a chimera,perhaps, or a sphinx... An immenselymoving portrait of motherhood and what it means to take care of a child...Julywrites of Cheryl’s discovery of maternal love with heartfelt emotion and power." (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times)“Miranda July — filmmaker, performanceartist and now novelist — is ready to leave the old Miranda July behind. Youknow the one: The curly haired gamin, her impossibly blue eyes swirling withideas. The irrepressible creative blowing cinematic kisses to the world…The First Bad Man is about to complicatethe picture. Striking and sexuallybold, it reveals a side that is darker and that, truth be told, has lurked inher work all along…Though TheFirst Bad Man actively challenges a reader's comfort zone, July creates afemale neurotic archetype that's familiar and fresh at once.” (Margaret Wappler, Los Angeles Times)“The First Bad Man is the first great book of 2015… July’s work istied together by her singular, confident, multifaceted voice. Her charactersare often unusual and under-confident; her writing is always the former andnever the latter. The First Bad Man,July’s debut novel, tells the story of an outwardly boring person whoseinterior life is a mosaic of delightful neuroses and staggering self-doubt... beautifully worded, emotionally complex,impressively but quietly insightful, and, in the right light, so, so funny.” (Josh Modell, The AV Club)“Miranda July’s novel is abrilliant document of our age of managed sharing… The First Bad Man is a brave undertaking for July, and not justbecause it finds her committing to long-form storytelling without a visualelement for the first time. It incorporates a boldly feminist recasting offamiliar tropes and genres...Though this is her first novel, July is anaccomplished writer of short fiction, and within The First Bad Man live a handful of perfectly drawn shortstories...July has an enviable talent for sketching inner life as all-consuming...Within the context of the wider world—in which all speech is policed, butespecially women’s stories about their uniquely feminine personal experiences—TheFirst Bad Man feelsvisionary… Few have Miranda July’s…particular talent for couching whatfeel like naked, universal truths in clouds of the imagined and theimpossible.” (Karina Longworth, Slate)“Risky fiction: hilarious, dark,uncomfortable, and so accurate in mapping the way fantasies can overtake lifethat it’s also one of the most honest character studies I’ve read in a longtime…when pregnancy and an infant are introduced in the second half of the book,imagination and fantasy life are replaced with very real anguish, protection,and love.” (Christopher Bollen, Interview)“July suffuses her narrative withcompassion... The First Bad Man is a terrific novel… an off-kilter,extremely smart meditation on sex, love, loneliness, and the demands of workand womanhood….engrossing, surprising, and emotionally true.” (Eugenia Williamson, the Boston Globe)“Love comes in a dizzying numberof shapes and sizes, Miranda July demonstrates in her stunning first novel…Julyis a brilliant stylist, and better yet, she’s funny…darkly comic, astonishing…thisbook couldn’t be better.” (Kit Reed, The Miami Herald)“The First Bad Man proves July’s extraordinary adeptness at yetanother art form… by the novel’s lovely, blissfully hopeful conclusion,she and Cheryl… earn our unexpected affection.” (Cliff Froehlich, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch)“If you were searching around fora representative creative artist for the middle of the 21st century’s seconddecade, you could do a lot worse than 40-year-old Miranda July. She’s anactress, a filmmaker, a performance artist, a conceptual artist, an APP, ashort story writer and now, finally with this book, a novelist… she is a fresh,feminist, groundbreaking, creative sensibility who should probably be treatedin entirety, if at all…Love, perverse if not polymorphous, is the basic subjecthere, although other subjects include everything from self-defense tolactation. Her literary voice is lively enough to be compulsive here.” (Jeff Simon, The Buffalo News)“Adownright delight…July has arranged all her characters on the stage, and wecan guess their trajectories. After initial clashes,Clee and Cheryl will form an unlikely, yet mutually rewarding friendship,possibly over a drunken karaoke session. Through this friendship, Cheryl willlearn to open her heart, let down her guard, and, hey, maybe touch up her hairand start shaving her legs…The subversive brilliance of July’snovel is that while it has the breezy verve of the sort of chummy novel whereall of the above happens, none of it actually does. Cheryl is transformed bylove, yes, but not in the way almost every other novel, film, and memoir abouta single, early-middle-aged woman tells us she must be in order to function asa viable heroine. There is a sneaky feminist agenda at work here, all the moreeffective because it’s smuggled into a weird, hilarious, compulsivelyreadable anti-romantic comedy. Like Clee, the book is a timebomb in avelour tracksuit.” (Jennie Yabroff, The Daily Beast)“Compelling…will delight the open-minded reader looking for something new. It will satisfy July’s fans and win her many more.” (Library Journal (starred review))“Delightful…Ms July, a director,screenwriter and artist, has managed to craft not only a beguilingly odd andunpretentious narrator, but also tell a wise and surprising love story… MsJuly’s writing playfully mixes extraordinary ingredients with ordinary concernsand the effect is often amusing and insightful. This is not the work of adilettante, but a strong follow-up to her acclaimed short stories that came outin 2007. Fiction will never claim Ms July’s undivided attention, but with luckthere will be more where this came from.” (The Economist)THEKANSAS CITY STAR “I have no compunction in predicting (in January,no less) that The First Bad Man will be one of the best books of 2015…Each new development — chromotherapy, unplanned pregnancy, love sprung from‘cowlike vacuousness’ — feels like a literary sucker punch, one so calculatedand well-placed that we can’t help, while bowled over, but admire July’s lefthook…July’s emotional insights are as unassuming as they are universal…TheFirst Bad Man is worth it for the sheer pleasure of discovering a freshstory and a vibrant, original voice. Readers may find the novel as seductive asCheryl finds love: ‘It just feels good all over,’ she gasps. ‘It’s like wearingsomething beautiful and eating something delicious at the same time, all thetime.’” (Liz Cook, The Kansas City Star)“Steeped in hyperbole, humor, wry commentary and strangecharacters…a masterful setup for a poignant nucleus on the matter ofmotherhood. The birth of Clee’s son…adds even greater humanity and dimension tothe young woman’s outlook than her lovingly dependent bond with Cheryl has. Asfor Cheryl herself, her lifelong yearning to love a child and be loved by thechild in return is finally fulfilled…heartbreakingly beautiful…exquisite…a singularlyrich anthem to maternal love. (David Wiegand, The San Francisco Chronicle)“This surreal novel blurs realityand imagination through the voice of Cheryl Glickman, the manager of a companythat sells self-defense videos as a fitness aid. Cheryl works from home andlives alone, eating at her sink with a single utensil and dish—part of a“system” so refined that, she notes with pleasure, “after days and days aloneit gets silky to the point where I can’t even feel myself anymore, it’s as if Idon’t exist.” The arrival of a guest disrupts her life, bringing violence anderoticism. July has perfected the artof the compellingly uncomfortable scene, and though the techniqueperhaps suits short fiction better than a novel, she succeeds in making Cherylboth achingly familiar and repulsively alien.” (New Yorker)“We don’t always know what intimate life consists of until novels tells us…a powerful mother-son love story…[the ending] leaves one thrillingly breathless…one realizes only then that one has been waiting the whole time for this very thing. And so one welcomes the multitalented Miranda July to the land of novel-writing…No one belongs here more than she.” (Lorrie Moore, The New York Review of Books)“The First Bad Man has time to unfold like an origami fortune-teller, revealing emotional landscapes that are satisfyingly complex, if slightly wrinkled…darker and more delicious than anything you'd expect.” (Amy Gentry, The Chicago Tribune)“Hilarious and poignant…fascinating and unsettling…In Cheryl's world, we find the kind of resonance that reverberates long after the book is closed.” (Karen Sandstrom, The Cleveland Plain-Dealer)
About the Author Miranda July is a filmmaker, writer, and artist. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Harper’s. The story collection No One Belongs Here More Than You won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and has been published in twenty-three countries. She wrote, directed, and starred in The Future. Her film, Me and You and Everyone We Know, received a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the Caméra d’Or at Cannes. In 2014 she debuted the audience-participatory performance, New Society, at the Walker Art Center, and launched the messaging service app, Somebody.
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Most helpful customer reviews
73 of 88 people found the following review helpful. What was this trying to be? By lightning bolt Miranda July must have really traded in some favors for the torrent of positive advance reviews. I think I'm supposed to be the ideal demographic for this book - young, liberal, urban, college-educated, feminist, creative type, and reading this book with the unspoken understanding that I'm expected to enjoy it was quite the meta-emotional disappointment. I may don khakis and start eating at Chick-Fil-A just so there's no mistake that I might care for this type of literature.The author develops characters by inventing strange, improbable habits, like pissing in Chinese takeout containers as if we're supposed to all nod in collective understanding. There is some strength and originality to her observations of mundanity, but it's all Miranda really can do and so it quickly devolves into a sideshow of rib elbowing "aren't I quirky?!!" As I read from the first to second act, I was filling, not with excitement about the story, but incredulity that this book had been written, edited, published, promoted, and was searching for the part when any of the characters become remotely likable. This moment did not arrive.Disturbingly cavalier about themes of pedophilia, domestic abuse, and statutory rape, the author betrays a blithe naivete (I assume?) that not even the clueless protagonist imbues. Some here have said they were disgusted by the sex scenes, and yes they are graphic and not for the faint of heart, but it's not as though an author can't explore these themes responsibly and effectively. I couldn't suspend disbelief enough to believe in a romance between a young, selfish blonde bombshell and a mentally ill, dorky middle aged woman that started out as violent play-acting. Miranda's main problem is that she glorifies physical abuse that would likely not earn quite the same praise if the genders were changed (lesbians can be in abusive relationships too!). What convinces me of July's cluelessness is the Nicholas Sparks-esque, cop-out, book-ended finish to a 200 page hack job of heavy material.This was a literary cherry-popper for me in a lot of ways. I've never read a book devoid of likable characters, devoid of self-awareness, devoid of meaning. At least 50 shades of trash is meant to be titillating junk food lit, but this? I have no idea was this was trying to be.
42 of 54 people found the following review helpful. A Book About As Good As Its Cover By TowerOPower The overwhelming praise for this book is baffling. There are flashes of humor and some great lines, but the book as a whole is dull and bogged down by a lazy narrative voice. The prose is mostly mediocre and unoriginal (yet people are calling it brilliant and unique because she uses a lot of short and sloppy sentences). The characters often feel uninspired and wholly unrelatable, and there's little here to hold the reader's attention. The book is saved by great dialogue that carries us through an otherwise sluggish journey of reflection and confusion. If this is what people think is brilliant, cutting-edge, surreal, or even bizarre, then they aren't reading very many books. I found this very run-of-the-mill and couldn't wait for it to be over. The only thing that kept me reading was the possibility that something truly unique would happen.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful. I Read This Book and Am Writing This Review With The Hope That I Can Prevent Others From Making The Same Mistake By Amazon Customer I don't typically write Amazon reviews, but I'm so glad they exist given the fact that many U.S.-based book reviewers were clearly sucked in by the literary celebrity of this author and wrote this book pretty good reviews even though it's, by any objective measure, an awful book. The U.K.-based reviews I read of this book were much more on point.I don't think I have ever disliked a book more. When I'm done with a book that I don't want to keep on my bookshelf I usually leave it out for a neighbor to take (I live in a neighborhood that's obsessed with "free stuff") but I am planning to throw this book in the recycling bin so that I can spare any of my neighbors from making the same mistake of reading it that I made.The writing was pedestrian (another reviewer noted the much-repeated description of a character wanting to "cream" on another character's face), the characters and their actions didn't make any sense in the context of the character development.The book is weird in the worst way possible: there is nothing about the characters that reflected any traits I've observed in humans during my decades living on this earth. Then the book descends into a bizarre series of many pages worth of random sexual fantasies, none of which are well-executed (by the writer) in any way. The "surprise" ending can be seen coming from miles away. There's a weird epilogue at the end that's on par with something you would read in a high-school creative writing class that, after suffering through 200+ pages of the book, I had no idea which characters it was in reference to.I think this is a perfect example of the literary establishment allowing something to be published because an author is well known that, had it been sent in as a random manuscript, would have been immediately thrown in the trash.
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