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The First Bad Man

Miranda July (Goodreads Author)

3.62 · Rating details · 24,157 ratings · 2,999 reviews

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

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Hardcover, 288 pages

Published January 13th 2015 by Scribner

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The Millions' Most Anticipated: The Great 2015 Book Preview I - Spring and Summer

93 books — 206 voters

Anticipated 2015 Literary Fiction

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Jul 28, 2014 Oriana rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2014, zeitgeist-y

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

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Jan 20, 2015 christa rated it it was ok

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 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 slightly alarmed-looking eyes. I was with her that time she did that social experiment involving the Penny Saver and I was with her when she made the movie that included a talking cat. I downloaded her app (until I needed the storage space) and I subscribed to the Email Project.

But sometimes I’ll just be walking along and I’ll think of the short story from her collection “No One Belongs Here More Than You” that starred a woman who taught land-based swimming lessons in her living room and I’ll kind of shake my head because that one still doesn’t make sense and even kind of bugs me.

In July's "The First Bad Man," Cheryl is a socially awkward 40-something who works at a non-profit that has recently rebranded its self-defense how-tos as fitness videos. She quietly pines over a 60-something board member who is always saying asshole-y things to her, which she assumes is done in an ironic way. She’s honed her home life to a smoothly-run operation built around the optimization of her every movement. She understands that if things get lax, if dishes pile up, it’s the fast track to depression which ends with peeing in mason jars.

Phillip, the board member, seems to be returning her affections, but really he is just warming her up to confess that he has fallen in love with an underaged girl but that he hasn’t yet consummated the relationship and he won’t -- unless Cheryl gives the okay. As he waits for her to decide if it’s okay, he sends her status updates on the sexual side of things: The girl has been rubbed through the jeans. She’s held his stiff member. That sort of thing.

Meanwhile, Cheryl ends up sharing her home with Clee -- her bosses’ big blonde daughter who is supposed to be looking for work in Los Angeles. Things are a bit contemptuous on the Clee-to-Cheryl front, and eventually the former is waging physical attacks on the latter -- which Cheryl combats by turning these go-rounds into reenactments of the Open Palm video series. Then it starts to get pant-y between them -- though Clee’s foot odor is a bit of a bonerkiller.

Through all of this is a situation with a therapist who plays a receptionist as a twice yearly bit of role playing, and Cheryl is drawn to certain babies who speak to her on a cellular level. And there are the regular texts from Phillip, which she uses in her super rich fantasy life.

At first I was ambivalent. I’d moved past caressing the cover and dug in deep to find that … well, it wasn’t screaming to me every time I set it aside. Then I actively hated it for a while. This ugly period faded and I had a sort of-kind of renewed interest that morphed into something along the lines of This is a Book with Words in it That I am Reading For Now. The End.

In the meantime, everybody is loving this book. Lena Dunham posted a photo of herself holding a copy and she credited July with being “fresh.” New York Times likes it, though the reviewer sounds like she’s trying to convince herself along with Book Review readers, Boston Globe, AV Club, etc. To not like this book feels like an inadvertent admission of a character flaw. The opposite of a humble brag. It’s not July; It’s me.

Writing about this book and talking about it with other readers has made me question my own judgement. It sounds funny. You’re right Lena, it does sound fresh! There are great lines, there are interesting ideas about relationships and the characters are truly unique. It is, I believe, even pretty funny.

The problem: It’s not fun to read. The characters’ actions are nonsensical. The plot twists aren’t compelling. When a character gobbles at her placenta like it’s leftover spaghetti I rolled my eyes so hard I almost pulled a forehead vein.

I’ve defended July against this in the past, but this time it’s true: Quirky for quirky sake. The worst kind of quirky. I just didn't like it. ...more

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Jan 15, 2015 Jen rated it did not like it

Shelves: abandoned

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. ...more

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Nov 16, 2014 lp rated it liked it

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

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Feb 20, 2015 Barry Pierce rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2015, 21st-century

"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 "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 so I'll catch them eventually. So, is The First Bad Man deserving of the hype? Yes. Or no actually. No, yes. Hmm. Maybe? Let's see.

We are presented with Cheryl Glickman, our protaginist. A woman who Dave Eggers called, 'one of the most original, most confounding and strangely sympathetic characters in recent fiction.' I have a feeling that Eggers has been diagnosed with a severe case of hyperbole here. In many ways, Cheryl reminded me of a highly neurotic version of the protaginist of Jenny Offill's brilliant short novel Dept. of Speculation, one of the best novels of last year. I've seen many review of this novel describing Cheryl as "quirky". God I hate that word. I refuse to ever use it. Cheryl is highly individual, eccentric, and idiosyncratic. She's Frances Ha and Annie Hall. She gets dumped with her boss' daughter, ninteen-year-old Clee, and this is where the novel tries to begin. Not only does Cheryl, a woman in her early forties, have to deal with a teenager claiming squatter's rights on her sofa, she is also kind of obsessed with Phillip, a man who is twenty years her senior. However, Phillip has other, Nabokovian, plans.

The first half of this novel middles along. It mainly concerns Cheryl's life and those around her. Nothing much happens. I might even go so far as to say the first half is boring. Well it isn't boring per se. To use Art Historical terms, the first half is Northern Renaissance and the second half is Rococo. The novel comes alive in the second half due to an event which inverts everything on its head. Suddenly you begin caring about the characters. You see their human side. It was in the second half that I really began enjoying this odd, odd novel. The plot is like that of the seminal classic Weird Science. At first it's great, partying with mid-1980s Kelly LeBrock but then you've got to deal with real issues. Like Bill Paxton being turned into a gigantic talking pile of shit.

This novel is definitely weird. It's different. There isn't a single sane character in there. It's like an episode of Kath & Kim but also not like that at all. Margaret Atwood meets Woody Allen in this novel but not in the way you want. So, can we answer the question now? Is The First Bad Man worth the hype? I say, yes. Yes because it is unlike any other novel I've read. Yes because it makes you laugh at the most inappropriate of things. Yes because of the phrase "mutual soaping". Yes because it is a realistic portrayal of life, no matter how zany. Yes. It is worth the hype. ...more

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Jan 05, 2015 Katie Parker rated it it was amazing

Shelves: all-time-favorites, literary-fiction, new-releases

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

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Dec 03, 2014 Matthew marked it as to-read

Shelves: gave-up

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.

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Feb 13, 2019 Hugh rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-lit, read-2019

I read this one for a 21st Century Literature group read.

I am struggling to decide on the rating because it is such an odd quirky mixture of styles, and I loved some parts and hated others. On the whole there are just about enough positives to justify 4 stars.

It starts brilliantly - the 40-something single narrator Cheryl has a distinctive voice that is often very funny. Things then become pretty dark and claustrophobic as her relationship with her young lodger Clee becomes confrontational, but ...more

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Jan 20, 2015 Paul Bryant rated it liked it

Shelves: novels

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 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 gorgeous movie Me and You and Everyone we Know. Or : if A M Homes and Miranda July went to a party dressed as each other no one would notice. Lorrie Moore, though, she’d be fuming (they’re wearing her dress but it looks sexier on them!), but you can’t copyright being really funny and sad about American suburbia.

There’s a Bad Sex in Fiction award given yearly by the (British) Guardian newspaper. Miranda July will not win. All the sex in this novel is bad, but it's deliberately very bad, wince-inducing, and there’s quite a lot of it. I will spare you the details but do not read most of this book while eating cereals, they may well go up your nose.

So as I was saying

Hey there, 42 year old Cheryl Glickman
Swingin' down the street so fancy-free
Nobody you meet could ever see the loneliness there - inside you
Hey there, 42 year old Cheryl Glickman
Why do all the boys just pass you by?
Could it be you just don't try or is it the clothes you wear?
Don't be so scared of changing and rearranging yourself
It's time for jumping down from the shelf

So she jumps or actually she’s kind of violently pushed by a strapping 21 year old blonde bombshell called Clee and …. Well, all the other reviews will tell you what happens then, or you could let MJ tell you herself. When I pick a novel to read I don’t want to know much about it except it’s supposed to be good.

It seems people have been dancing naked in the streets to celebrate the wonderful loveliness of this novel. Well, I wouldn’t go that far. I’d doff my overcoat and loosen my tie and say “yeah, pretty good” a few times. It was nice. It was in favour of people and it has an understanding that there are those who in the midst of a teeming planet live lonely lives. I kind of sort of maybe-ish well yes okay recommend this. If you don’t mind a lot of detailed bad sex and even more where the characters are thinking about the bad sex they want to have or have had. 3.5 stars.

...more

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Jan 11, 2015 Book Mitch added it

Shelves: my-book-club-choices-2015

i...i dont know...this was either brilliant or odd. or both. i need time to process

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Jan 05, 2015 Kevin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: weird-stuff

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

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Jan 16, 2015 Anita Pomerantz rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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

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Feb 24, 2015 Sian rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fave-fic

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

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Mar 14, 2015 R. rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2015

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

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Apr 19, 2015 Carina rated it really liked it

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. ...more

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Jul 07, 2014 Courtney rated it liked it

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

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Sep 08, 2015 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read2015, audiobook

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

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Oct 15, 2014 Lolly K Dandeneau rated it really liked it

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

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Mar 12, 2015 Snotchocheez rated it really liked it

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

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Apr 08, 2015 Anndra Dunn rated it did not like it

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

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Mar 22, 2016 Steven Godin rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: america-canada, postmodern-fiction, feminism

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

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Jul 16, 2014 Po Po rated it it was amazing

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

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Feb 14, 2015 Toby rated it really liked it

Shelves: lit

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

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Feb 18, 2017 Danger rated it really liked it

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 always pro ...more

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Dec 20, 2015 lark benobi rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2015, scribner, favorites-21st-century, exuberant-books, bookclub

I didn't expect this novel, especially given the way it begins, to turn out to be a love story. I was surprised by it in so many ways, most of all for its exquisite depiction of human loneliness. Everyone is lonely in this story. Everyone tries to run away from the despair of their own lives by creating a script and playing parts they write for themselves and in which they are the hero, so that they can justify the most selfish and repulsive acts against others and to pretend for a while that th ...more

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Sep 25, 2014 Tyler Goodson rated it it was amazing

Shelves: six-stars, arcs

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

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Jan 16, 2015 Francesca Marciano rated it it was ok

Honestly, I really don't know about this. I'm not sure what she wanted to do with this book. It's as if July tries too hard to be quirky and weird, and it's not fun anymore. This trying too hard becomes annoying. The plot and the characters didn't make sense and I couldn't care less for any of them. She lost me after the first ten pages and I'm not sure why I didn't abandon the book earlier. Probably the fact that I loved her films and her short stories so much. Disappointed. ...more

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Feb 12, 2015 Jen rated it it was ok

Shelves: fiction, adult, 2015

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. ...more

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Jan 23, 2015 Julie Ehlers rated it really liked it

Shelves: funny, literary-fiction

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 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 July seemed to be inviting us all to share a good laugh at Cheryl’s expense, which is one of my least favorite qualities in a novel—if an author can’t be charitable about her characters, why is she even writing about them? The book’s tone was also difficult to pin down; I like it when a book makes me both laugh and cry, but swinging from absurd comedy one minute to heavy emotion the next is tough to do, and doesn’t always work here. I also had a more general annoyance with the book’s use of the “middle-aged people who live alone are by definition kind of pathetic” trope and the (view spoiler) trope, both of which I wouldn’t have expected from someone supposedly as offbeat as July. Occasionally, too, the book seemed quirky just for the sake of being quirky (*cough*snails*cough*), and I have little patience for that.

Ultimately, though, the positives far outweighed the negatives for me. For one thing, the sheer outrageousness of the plot really kept me turning the pages. When you feel like almost anything can happen next, you really want to find out what’s going to happen next, and there’s a joy and excitement there that I wish I could have with every book I read. The book was also flat-out hilarious, both in terms of plot, character, etc., and in terms of the language July uses (I cracked up every time I saw the phrase “mutual soaping,” for instance—I’m laughing right now just thinking about it). As the book went along and I got more and more drawn in, I also became much more emotionally invested; this was probably not an accident, because the book itself becomes heavier and less raucous as it goes along, but it was definitely effective. The passage where Cheryl wonders if she’s like honey that thinks it’s a small bear just killed me (I won’t forget that anytime soon) and was probably the moment the book won me over for good. I closed the book with a 5-star glow, although that eventually settled down to a still-great 4 stars.

As I was getting close to finishing this book, I tried to imagine what I would say to someone who asked if I recommended it, and I came up empty. I wouldn’t really be able to argue with anyone who claims this book is self-indulgent, annoying, overly quirky, uneven, or a kind of 50 Shades of Grey for hipsters (some of the parallels are hard to ignore). But, I don’t know ... I thought it was good.
...more

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Apr 19, 2017 Krista rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2017

“I'm the first man,” she said.
“The one in denim?”
“The first bad man.”
It was the way she was standing when she said it – her feet planted wide, her big hands waiting in the air. Just like a bad man, the kind that comes to a sleepy town and makes all kinds of trouble before galloping off again. She wasn't the first bad man ever but the first I'd ever met who had long blond hair and pink velour pants. She snapped her gum impatiently.

This was my first reaction upon finishing The First Bad Man, a
“I'm the first man,” she said.
“The one in denim?”
“The first bad man.”
It was the way she was standing when she said it – her feet planted wide, her big hands waiting in the air. Just like a bad man, the kind that comes to a sleepy town and makes all kinds of trouble before galloping off again. She wasn't the first bad man ever but the first I'd ever met who had long blond hair and pink velour pants. She snapped her gum impatiently.

This was my first reaction upon finishing The First Bad Man, and it bears repeating: “I smiled and winced through the whole thing and then ended it in tears.” It would be patronising and dismissive to call this book merely “quirky” or “kinky” (but it is both), and Miranda July – award-winning filmmaker, short-story-writer, performance artist, and first-time novelist – is presumably too busy and too thoughtful to waste her time writing a book that can be dismissed that easily. I don't think July wrote a shocking book for shock's sake, or reached for the ludicrous just to be funny (but it is both shocking and terribly funny), but in a way that reminded me somewhat of the classic-of-the-absurd A Confederacy of Dunces, she created a character so outside the bounds of reality that she opened a window upon the hearts of all of us; Cheryl Glickman is the exception that proves the rules for this messy human project. This wasn't a passive reading experience – I had physical reactions, smiling and wincing, on every page – and I can't help but admire any book that pulls that out of me. Let's meet Cheryl Glickman:

I drove to the doctor's office as if I was starring in a movie Phillip was watching – windows down, hair blowing, just one hand on the wheel. When I stopped at red lights, I kept my eyes mysteriously forward. Who is she? people might have been wondering. Who is that middle-aged woman in the blue Honda?

Who is she? Cheryl is a frumpy forty-three-year-old single woman (her best physical features are her shell-like ears, so she tends to enter rooms ear-first) who lives alone (with a bizarre system of housekeeping rules meant to stave off decrepitude), who remote-manages a women's self-defense centre (Open Palm) that has transitioned into selling self-defense-as-fitness DVDs, and who has a vivid and long-running sexual fantasy involving a sixty-five-year-old board member, Phillip; a wrinkled, balding jerk who thinks it's funny to grab Cheryl by her chunky necklace and lead her around the office (but as this is the only action Cheryl gets, she's willing to laugh along as though Phillip is just making fun of the kind of jerk who might actually do something like that unironically). As the novel begins, two situations arise that rattle Cheryl's smooth-edged equilibrium: Phillip has fallen in love with a sixteen-year-old, and through a series of crude texts (he describes his “stiff member” and how he wants to “cream” on the girl's “jugs”), he asks Cheryl's blessing before bedding the girl; and Cheryl's bosses ask her to allow their twenty-one-year-old daughter, Clee, to temporarily move in with her. Cheryl is so passive and uncomplaining that she neither balks at Phillip as he downgrades her from potential partner to asexual arbiter, nor at Clee as she refuses to follow the household rules, looming large and beautiful, stinking of foot rot.

Cheryl unintentionally begins therapy at this time, and for the first time ever, has someone to talk to. Putting aside the fact that the therapist invites Cheryl to pee in empty Chinese food takeout containers behind a ripped paper screen in the corner of her office if she needs to use the facilities, Cheryl finds the experience enlightening; and especially when Dr. Tibbetts shares the fact the she and the colour therapist she shares the office with like to engage in “adult games” involving fantasy and role-playing. Cheryl is able to use this idea of game-playing to reinterpret (and gain power in) her relationships with both Phillip and Clee. When Clee becomes physically abusive, Cheryl reacts with the popping and butterflying of Open Palm's old self-defense videos, and once Clee recognises the moves and the scenarios that Cheryl starts intentionally setting up, she responds in kind and the pair begin wrestling around the house like a cross between Fight Club and Cato jumping out of the shadows at Inspector Clouseau. It's creepy enough to have Clee reciting “Yum yum yum” from the bushes as Cheryl approaches to unlock the front door, but what the young woman doesn't know is that on the inside, Cheryl is imagining that she has a “stiff member” that can't wait to “cream” on Clee's “jugs”. And while the game-playing does allow Cheryl to overcome her lifelong impotence, her therapist recognises that Cheryl has begun to dehumanise everyone around her; turning them into pawns for her fantasies. And then things happen and things change and Cheryl finds love in an unexpected place.

Sometimes I looked at her sleeping face, the living flesh of it, and was overwhelmed by how precarious it was to love a living thing. She could die simply from lack of water. It hardly seemed safer than falling in love with a plant.

I liked that we don't learn anything about Cheryl's childhood that might explain the why of her strange existence – other than the time that she intensely bonded with a visiting infant when she was nine; an event that caused Cheryl to seek out a psychic connection with every baby she sees for the rest of her life – and meeting her in middle age, it was touching to watch as Cheryl transforms from someone with a wholly fantasy-based life to one who has a physical presence in the world. The ending was earned but not predictable, and as I opened with, I was in tears by the time I closed the book's covers. Loved it. ...more

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About Miranda July

Miranda July

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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."

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Quotes from The First Bad Man

“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?” — 87 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.” — 67 likes

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