No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories

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The things that leave me cold in July's work are the very things I worry about in my own, so this is a very personal critique. July's voice is trying too hard to be hip, but ends up tone deaf, and, being charitable, is inadvertently full of character assassinations. Not a bad writing style - a bit dry for my tastes, but perfectly serviceable - but Oh God the content. Funny the first time, because you know no one ever actually “decides” or “thinks” that and it's just an amusing function of the authorial voice, but incredibly grating the forty-seven-thousandth time because by then you realize you're on page 200 and no one in this book has “decided” or “thought” anything at all. And yes, Miranda July might be accused of impudence in thinking these slight wisps are worth some of our hard-earned conscious moments but it’s the forced playfulness which got on my nerves.

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. that said i'm not here to bash the book of stories, i only got through three of them and that was enough for me.They both have little medals that they are pinning on this person; they are badges of great honor and strength. Okay, I take that back, of course that’s appealing to people, have I never watched porn or "Charmed"? 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. 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. I've kind of been going crazy since reading it and I thought writing it down and seeing if anyone else responded would help.

Miranda July's is a beautiful, odd, original voice - seductive, sometimes erotic, and a little creepy, too. These stories are incredibly charming, beautifully written, frequently laugh-out-loud funny, and even, a dozen or so times, profound. 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 .But believing is not an issue here, the time for faith and fantasy is over, it is really really happening. Miranda grew up in Berkeley, California, where she first began writing plays and staging them at the all-ages club 924 Gilman. Despite the bleakness of their lonely lives, the adults in the stories respond to their surroundings with child-like puzzlement and wonder. July’s collection of stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You, won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and has been published in 23 countries. It's hard to rate a book of short stories like this one, some of them were a straight out 1, others were a 5.

A teacher seduces a 14-year-old boy in her special-needs class, and no one notices because “nobody really cares about anyone but themselves anyway. I swear to Christ if I read one more slim selfsatisfied volume of "witty" short fiction where everybody talks like a fucking Grad Student I'm going to hit myself in the brain with a ballpeen hammer until I'm illiterate. And in that way, no one in the book is anything like a real person: Instead, the characters here are all a bundle of quirks and damages that we’re supposed to find adorable and funny. Her writing has appeared in the Paris Review, Harper’s, and the New Yorker; It Chooses You was her first book of non-fiction.About two thirds of the way through though, I did start to feel that although the characters changed, some male, some female, it was always the voice of Miranda July that dominated.