No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories by Miranda July
|
List Price: Our Price: $7.92 You Save: $6.08 (43%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $3.30 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories
Book Review: Stories from June to July
Summary: 5 Stars
Miranda July is a stand-up comedian short story sort of person. She pokes fun of life. She doest it very well. Each story is a joke Miranda July is telling. And there is generally a punch line in each. And you never know where it comes and if it will come, but it does come. The point is to laugh at the end of each of her story. Just to be safe. But if you laugh already earlier in the story, you shouldn't laugh at the end. That would be inappropriate and even rude. Since there are exactly sixteen stories, you should laugh at least or exactly sixteen times. Her story is not odd, just funny. Her story is not sly, just comical. Her story is not eccentric, just dashingly comical.
It is true there is a slight repetition in her work. But that is the beauty of it. Comedian repeats the same thing over & over again. It builds a risible motif. Which is what July is trying to do. And you have seen worse repetitive things before such as wall paper, your stepfather's pantyhose, the pots of plants on the windowsill--so once in awhile when you see repetition in a good collection of short stories, it feels kind of good like chewing on fresh mint leaves at a museum.
Most noticeable of her jokes: The Swimming Team, Ten True Things, and The Boy from Lam Kien.
Please read her now before you die.
Book Review: I'M JEALOUS
Summary: 5 Stars
But instead of hating Miranda July because I am jealous of her, I'm going to love her. Well, not love HER, I don't even know her . . . but love the idea of her. Love the fact that she's alive and she wrote these stories (even though I wish I had written them!) I've loved her before: I bought all the copies of Learning to Love You More in a bookstore and gave them out as presents. But making a book like that isn't something I've ever want to do, so I just loved it without a hint of envy. But this book is fiction, and it's fabulous, and inventive. The characters are so pure and raw they're almost skinless. They do and say and act out on the swirling, mess of lunacy that resides in everyone's mind. I don't want to say too much about each story because the greatness in all these stories is that what the reader knows in the end is so much more illuminated and full than what she knows in the beginning. There are moments in the book where I actually, audibly , gasped. Put my hand to my mouth and gasped. Like at a moment near the end of the story about Prince William. My gasp had nothing to do with His Royal Highness. This book is full of moments like that--they are all magical in a way, everything that great writing is supposed to be.Book Review: like stepping into the head of someone you thought you would never meet but always wanted to
Summary: 5 Stars
I absolutely loved this book! The characters are vivid and real and sad and funny and dirty and depressed and erotic and rotten and beautiful....
I found myself laughing and crying, sometimes while on the same page. I so needed to read a book like this...it tells it like it is, all tangled up and messy. Miranda July has a way of slipping dark secrets into the stories that simply just sit there and stare you in the face. The sometimes disturbing realities of the characters or the purely bizarre human events that occur are maginfied and yet made to seem so normal. I don't think I would want to be a character in one of these stories but I am quite sure that everyone around me is...or vice versa. What a strange and marvelous book!
p.s. I simply can't get the image of the woman in the tattered robe driving past the main character in Majesty screaming for "Potato" with the windows shut. Or, the line "One woman still had the napkin on her head, possibly asleep." in It was Romance. I could go on and on...
Book Review: Witty, quirky short stories
Summary: 5 Stars
This might not be your best introduction to Miranda July. I'd suggest watching her movie Me and You and Everyone We Know first. If its brand of shocking yet sweet-hearted humor isn't your cup of tea, don't pick up this book. If, on the other hand, you love the film, think of this book as a must-read sequel.
Her distinctive voice is as loud and clear as it could be here. I enjoyed every one of these 16 charming and hilarious pieces, laughing on every page and smiling on every paragraph.
A typical excerpt: "If you are sad, ask yourself why you are sad. Then pick up the phone and call someone and tell him or her the answer to the question. If you don't know, call the operator and tell him or her. Most people don't know that the operator has to listen, it is the law."
Book Review: YOU ROCK MIRANDA JULY!!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
Hello,
I only heard about Miranda July when I was in a favorite neighborhood bookstore--Pegasus books--in Berkeley. I read through some of the book and then rented the movie...I loved it. I think it is great that Ms. July puts herself out there as an artist, by doing the footwork and being proactive in getting her name known. I don't think she is smug or arrogant as one reviewer said, but that is just one person's opinion, right. I love short stories and I especially like short stories that are not the same mainstream, typical stories.
I think it is great that Ms. July was and is published in great magazines, as any great writer should be, when they now what they are doing and she is a true artist in her work.
Thanks for you work, love it.