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The First Bad Man
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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 sh ...more
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 sh ...more
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Community Reviews
(showing 1-30)
Oh my god this book is so totally weird and wonderful.
Reading this is kind of like watching an insane person dance. There's all these bizarre jerks and twists and feints that are completely implausible until they happen, and you open your mouth to protest but Miranda just says shh shh shh, it's going to be fine and somehow it is.
Despite being, plotwise, so bonkersly unlike anything you have ever thought of before, I don't mean to suggest that it's absurdist or surreal or Naked Lunch–ian or anyt ...more
Reading this is kind of like watching an insane person dance. There's all these bizarre jerks and twists and feints that are completely implausible until they happen, and you open your mouth to protest but Miranda just says shh shh shh, it's going to be fine and somehow it is.
Despite being, plotwise, so bonkersly unlike anything you have ever thought of before, I don't mean to suggest that it's absurdist or surreal or Naked Lunch–ian or anyt ...more
Typically when I don’t like a buzz book I delight in mocking word choices and flimsy chapters or the thin line separating the novel’s plot and the author’s bio. The book becomes a contender for worst-of-the-year and I quietly, okay not-so quietly, dare someone, anyone to write something worse.
When I don’t like a book by Miranda July, my second inclination is to assume that there must be something wrong with me.
I adore Miranda July The Artist and all the weird shit that brews behind those sligh ...more
When I don’t like a book by Miranda July, my second inclination is to assume that there must be something wrong with me.
I adore Miranda July The Artist and all the weird shit that brews behind those sligh ...more
The first BAD book by Miranda July...not sure as it is the first and last I'll read by her. Bizarre is a good way to describe it. The main character Cheryl - mid 40's - faces anxiety with disturbing sexual fantasies. She suffers from OCD and is mentally unstable. She is unlikable and the story is just plain weird. Three quarters through and no improvement. It's a hands down loser. Throwing this one in the abandoned pile.
WOW! I have never turned on a book so quickly in my entire life. When I started it I was in LOVE with its unique, odd hilariousness. But then shit got REAL weird. Fantasy sex stuff that wasn't interesting or funny at all. Just as I'd be about to give up, July would go back to her normal funniness about something totally mundane (the Japanese "customs" of her bosses, the therapist) and I'd remember how enjoyable she is when she's just developing characters. In the end, I was really touched by the
...more
Feb 20, 2015
Barry Pierce
rated it
liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
21st-century,
read-in-2015
"I've been meaning to buy that one myself,"
"Yeah I saw Lena Dunham gave it a good review so I had to pick it up!"
-The interaction between the lady behind the counter in Waterstone's and I when I bought this book.
The First Bad Man is a novel that has been hyped for months. Literally every single of those "Reads to Look Out For in 2015" lists has had this one near the top. I must admit that this is my first experience with July's writing. I know she has some short stories floating around somewhere ...more
"Yeah I saw Lena Dunham gave it a good review so I had to pick it up!"
-The interaction between the lady behind the counter in Waterstone's and I when I bought this book.
The First Bad Man is a novel that has been hyped for months. Literally every single of those "Reads to Look Out For in 2015" lists has had this one near the top. I must admit that this is my first experience with July's writing. I know she has some short stories floating around somewhere ...more
Miranda July, you wonderfully weird creature. This book is probably one of the craziest things I've ever read, but it works, absolutely and completely. She crafts sentences that make you think the world was missing something until they were written. She finds genuine humor in the sadness, and poignancy in the mundane.
"I wondered how many other women had sat on this toilet and stared at this floor. Each of them the center of their own world, all of them yearning for someone to put their love into ...more
"I wondered how many other women had sat on this toilet and stared at this floor. Each of them the center of their own world, all of them yearning for someone to put their love into ...more
I read the final pages twice silently, once aloud. Am currently considering getting them tattoed on my body. It's rare (or, at least, I feel like it's rare) for books as blunt and as bold as 'The First Bad Man' to leave you beaming from ear to ear. I don't care that there's weird sex all throughout; I'm gifting this book to my parents.
Waited for weeks to get it at the library. Checked it out first day. Forgot it at The Mill. Remember leaving it on the bar. Enjoy the free discard, Mill person. I am the 2nd bad man.
If you take a chisel and gently chip off the elaborate encrustation of florid psychology that at times sends this novel moonwalking towards the field of dreams that is bizarro fiction but really only up to its multihued verges and peeking across, then what I think you get is the plot of the 1966 Swingin’ London film Georgy Girl blended with the lunatic character swerves and switcheroos from any Iris Murdoch novel garnished with the sweet suburban Miss Lonely atmosphere of Miranda July’s own gorg
...more
In her debut novel, The First Bad Man, Miranda July presents the story of a lonely 40-something woman named Cheryl Glickman. Cheryl looks at the world in her own hopeful and peculiar way. She fantasizes about an older man who is busy seducing a teenage girl, she tries to make psychic connections to a long-lost baby named Kubelko Bondy, and she has therapy sessions with a woman who is not really a therapist and is actually having an affair with the therapist Cheryl should be seeing. When Cheryl l
...more
i...i dont know...this was either brilliant or odd. or both. i need time to process
I feel the need to give prospective readers of this book a quiz.
Do you like HBO's Girls? YES NO
Do you think you would like HBO's Girls on steroids? YES NO
Do you generally appreciate black humor? YES NO
Do you like performance art? YES NO
What if that performance art came in the form of a book? YES NO
Score each Yes with 1 point. Make sure you score at least a 4 before proceeding.
Seriously, this book is simultaneously whacked out, hysterical, disgusting, and oddly moving.
Initially I thought the book ...more
Do you like HBO's Girls? YES NO
Do you think you would like HBO's Girls on steroids? YES NO
Do you generally appreciate black humor? YES NO
Do you like performance art? YES NO
What if that performance art came in the form of a book? YES NO
Score each Yes with 1 point. Make sure you score at least a 4 before proceeding.
Seriously, this book is simultaneously whacked out, hysterical, disgusting, and oddly moving.
Initially I thought the book ...more
Miranda July has such beautiful insights that resonate with one's sometimes secret inner thoughts. Like when she writes that she sits perfectly still while someone is talking about her because she "loves to be described". Or how she looks at babies to see if she has a secret connection with them that's stronger than that with their mother. These are the little things that can pass through the mind without a second thought, but here she brings them to a whole new level.
The characters have free r ...more
The characters have free r ...more
I'll admit, I am kind of Miranda July's target audience, and perhaps my glowing review won't be particularly surprising. Other than her film The Future (like, I'm sure it's brilliant, but if I wanted to be super sad about cats I'd just go to my local pet shop) I've been into everything else she's ever done and this probably isn't a super impartial review so take this with a gain of salt of whatever.
This book somehow perfectly captures all the sad ugliness that exists in a mediocre life, specific ...more
This book somehow perfectly captures all the sad ugliness that exists in a mediocre life, specific ...more
Auteurs like the evidently multi-talented Miranda July generally don't receive much attention 'round these here parts, so I was thrilled that our little library got a copy of this...yet the curious generic black cover, the riotous blaze of colors on the inside front and back covers, and Ms. July's stay-away-from-me-and-my-book photo all seem to non-verbally yet overtly communicate THIS IS ART! in a way that makes me scoff dubiously.
Shouldn't have scoffed. She's got herself a new fan here in Ala ...more
Shouldn't have scoffed. She's got herself a new fan here in Ala ...more
My brain is scrambled. This is the weirdest story I have read in years. The characters are all off their rocker, or maybe we are all just as strange deep down inside.
Cheryl is a bit disturbed and her hunger for Philip and the connections she sees with him are outlandish, so starts the novel as it spins madly into the strange and unusual. When her bosses need a place for their daughter Clee to live and chose her, her tight ship of a life will sink. Clee is a brutish knockout, in more ways than o ...more
Cheryl is a bit disturbed and her hunger for Philip and the connections she sees with him are outlandish, so starts the novel as it spins madly into the strange and unusual. When her bosses need a place for their daughter Clee to live and chose her, her tight ship of a life will sink. Clee is a brutish knockout, in more ways than o ...more
On a scale of 1 to 5, I'd rate it yellow. Or helicopter. It's likely perverse. It's probably clever. I'm a little too shell shocked to really be of any use with this review. If you do decide to read it, tell someone where you'll be and what time you'll be home.
Well, I finished it and...huh.
I will say that July is a talented writer but...the characters. Each and every character (up to and including the preemie baby) was just simply creepy, got under my skin (a tip of the hat to July, I guess). I'm OK with creepy in a book (Lolita), but this was just overboard and, yes, very obnoxious ("Look at my wacky cast of dysfunctional characters! Don't you see yourself and everyone you know in their quirks and calamities?" July seems to be shouting...and puts th ...more
I will say that July is a talented writer but...the characters. Each and every character (up to and including the preemie baby) was just simply creepy, got under my skin (a tip of the hat to July, I guess). I'm OK with creepy in a book (Lolita), but this was just overboard and, yes, very obnoxious ("Look at my wacky cast of dysfunctional characters! Don't you see yourself and everyone you know in their quirks and calamities?" July seems to be shouting...and puts th ...more
This book is bizarre. I was talking about it with a librarian who had read this and her short stories, and he said something that I'm going to put here and possibly misquote. Quirky characters and strange situations are more tolerable in short stories, because they are in and out, you can marvel at them but not have to live with them; in a novel it can cause agony to the reader as you dive deeper into strange people making confusing decisions. Agreed, agreed. I would probably like July's short s
...more
I am a big fan of Miranda July’s films (I loved You & Me & Everyone We Know) but I never dove into her fiction before. This book managed to evoke an ocean’s worth of heartache out of me, as what July manages to do is create characters that are so alien (and alienated) yet so emotionally real and resonant, it’s almost impossible to not empathize with them. And the truths she CONSTANTLY unveils, one after another like machine gun fire, are sometimes funny and sometimes sad, but they are al
...more
This is a book about Quirkily Insane and unlikeable caricatures doing Quirkily Insane and unlikeable things. Unfortunately the book wants you to root for its protagonist and this just isn't going to happen.
This was an exhausting read, maintaining a constant low-level unpleasantness. The authorial voice is arch and swithers between trying to present aspects of depression as slyly humorous - such as the protagonist explaining her system for managing her life, all going back to only having one set ...more
This was an exhausting read, maintaining a constant low-level unpleasantness. The authorial voice is arch and swithers between trying to present aspects of depression as slyly humorous - such as the protagonist explaining her system for managing her life, all going back to only having one set ...more
Miranda July has produced a novel that is so Miranda July only fans of Miranda July could love it. Yes, it's got her character quirks, yes it's got some potentially inappropriate relationships, yes there are some quite bizarre moments and naturally there are some magical ways of seeing the world, especially the world experienced by Cheryl Glickman. But then almost out of nowhere she flips a switch and Cheryl starts to come of age in a pretty straight forward narrative of self discovery. Except i
...more
I don't know whether to laugh or cry or scream at the top of my lungs as I ride a rainbow across the sky.
Sometimes a book just has "it" -- the connection that makes you feel as if the book is written especially for you.
It's one of those unputdownable books that puts the rest of the world on hold.
Of course there are quirky and endearing characters. And kinky shit (this IS written by the lady who came up with pooping back and forth forever.) But there's so much more.
It's an exploration of human ...more
Sometimes a book just has "it" -- the connection that makes you feel as if the book is written especially for you.
It's one of those unputdownable books that puts the rest of the world on hold.
Of course there are quirky and endearing characters. And kinky shit (this IS written by the lady who came up with pooping back and forth forever.) But there's so much more.
It's an exploration of human ...more
Mar 22, 2016
Steven Godin
rated it
it was ok
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
america,
postmodern
I must have been possessed by a bizarre ,self-loathing middle age women who has some pretty messed up sexual fantasies to get through this!, my God what on earth was going on here!, funny at times yes but in an oddball, screwed up way, and if Cheryl Glickman was not irritating enough what about Clee!, I guess half of me couldn't help but feel something for her, while the other half wanted to chuck her out the fucking window!. The first third was somewhat normal before sliding down a slippery slo
...more
Cheryl is a forty year old woman living alone until, suddenly, she isn't. Clee is the girl half her age who is the reason Cheryl doesn't live alone anymore. What happens when these two collide might shock, and will definitely amaze, as July shepherds us through the astoundingly weird to the stunningly humane. Sometimes I stopped reading to talk to myself out loud about how good this book is. It is really, really good, and it contains every kind of love. Cheryl thinks her story might not be a Gre
...more
My feelings about this novel careened wildly as I was reading it. If you’d asked me what my possible rating for this book might be, at various points I would’ve said anywhere from 2 stars to 5. Any enjoyment I felt was usually tempered by exasperation at one thing or another—for one thing, I couldn’t get a handle on the narrator, Cheryl. She mostly seemed amusingly clueless, but would occasionally, jarringly, say something much wiser than I would’ve expected from her. At other times, Miranda Jul
...more
This book just wasn't my cup of tea. I've read other works by Miranda July that I've thoroughly enjoyed, but this one just didn't do anything for me. It made me sad, and I definitely don't need to be any sadder this winter. I thought the concept was interesting but it was just too weird for me. I know that this will be an unpopular opinion, nonetheless it is my opinion and I will stand by it.
Sep 11, 2015
Rebecca Foster
rated it
liked it
Shelves:
unsolicited-from-publisher,
reviewed-for-blog
I had barely heard of the author (an indie filmmaker and visual artist) and knew nothing about the book before starting it – which is probably for the best given that a simple synopsis makes it sound even weirder than it really is and would likely have turned me off. That black-and-white cover doesn’t really give you any clues, either, though when you open it up you get the riotously colored modern art swirls of the endpapers. You could think of the design as emblematic of the book itself: unpro
...more
May 01, 2016
Alex
rated it
really liked it
Recommends it for:
dumb, smelly chicks and the women they beat up semi-sexually
And there's this generation of women saying yes, we are pretty slimy. Alissa Nutting's gross reverse Lolita; Tamara Faith Berger's literary golden shower. Megan Abbott and Gillian Flynn are sortof in on it too. Even Broad City is part of it. The earliest example I'm aware of is Joyce Carol Oates' Blonde, 800 pages of a slimy Marilyn Monroe. It's feminist; it's about tearing down the virgin / whore dichotomy and thrusting the reality of women forward. (I said dichotomy! Yaaaaay, college!)
Anyway, ...more
В моей личной каталожной системе такие книжки сопровождаются карточкой с ярлыком «романы о психах» — они бывают разной степени обаятельности, но неизменно продолжают традицию «маленького человека» Гоголя и Чехова. Как правило, они жутковаты, ибо миры таких аутистов довольно неуютны, хотя могут быть очень понятны и узнаваемы. Также неизменно в них то, что окружающий мир остается вполне отвратителен — как минимум, с XIX века в этом смысле ничего не изменилось. Все те же игры, в которые играют люди
...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Book Club: The First Bad Man | 1 | 3 | Jan 14, 2018 02:23PM | |
| Play Book Tag: The First Bad Man - Miranda July 4/5 | 2 | 23 | Apr 24, 2016 11:50PM |
Miranda July (born February 15, 1974) is a performance artist, musician, writer, actress and film director. She currently resides in Los Angeles, California, after having lived for many years in Portland, Oregon. Born Miranda Jennifer Grossinger, she works under the surname of "July," which can be traced to a character from a "girlzine" Miranda created with a high school friend called "Snarla."
Mir ...more
Mir ...more
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“If you were wise enough to know that this life would consist mostly of letting go of things you wanted, then why not get good at the letting go, rather than the trying to have?”
—
73 likes
“Then I realized that 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.”
—
52 likes
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