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Original Essays | October 18, 2009

Victoria Hislop: IMG From Leprosy to Lorca — Strange Inspiration



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No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories

by Miranda July

No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories Cover

Staff Pick

Is there a creative project Miranda July can't conquer? If you've jealously posed this question before reading her fiction, stay away from the new collection. No One Belongs Here More Than You will only embitter you further. It's not enough for July to write, direct, and star in a prize-winning film at Cannes and Sundance. Her recordings for Kill Rock Stars, stage performances, web projects... Maybe she's a terrible abstract painter, but I doubt it. Imagine sixteen tight, breathtaking doses of Me and You and Everyone We Know, the same deep compassion, anxious humor, and aching vulnerability. Cross Aimee Bender and Amy Hempel, and then cross you fingers July makes time for more fiction soon.
Recommended by Dave, Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

From Powells.com:

Please note: This book has been released with one of two dust jacket colors: yellow or dark pink. Powell's cannot guarantee which color you will receive in your order.

Publisher Comments:

Award-winning filmmaker and performing artist Miranda July brings her extraordinary talents to the page in a startling, sexy, and tender collection. In these stories, July gives the most seemingly insignificant moments a sly potency. A benign encounter, a misunderstanding, a shy revelation can reconfigure the world. Her characters engage awkwardly — they are sometimes too remote, sometimes too intimate.

With great compassion and generosity, July reveals their idiosyncrasies and the odd logic and longing that govern their lives. No One Belongs Here More Than You is a stunning debut, the work of a writer with a spectacularly original and compelling voice.

Review:

"An accomplished debut collection of 16 stories, simultaneously bizarre and achingly familiar....A smart, original collection." Kirkus Reviews

Review:

"July's collection of stories is a gem of unconventional storytelling. Comparisons to Lorrie Moore only get the potential reader halfway there; one must add Karen Finley's meditations and Douglas Coupland's painful self-exploration." Booklist

Review:

"Some of these couplings are startling, but others are cliches that drag down an otherwise witty and unusual book. The best moments here are small...and as they accrue the collection becomes an exhilarating read." Library Journal

Review:

"Miranda July's is a beautiful, odd, original voice — seductive, sometimes erotic, and a little creepy, too." David Byrne

Review:

"These stories are incredibly charming, beautifully written, frequently laugh-out-loud funny, and even, a dozen or so times, profound. Miranda July is a very real writer, and has one of the most original voices to appear in fiction in many years. Fans of Lorrie Moore should rub this book all over themselves — she's got that perfect balance of humor and pathos. There has been no more enjoyable and promising a debut collection in many a moon." Dave Eggers

Review:

"These delightful stories do that essential-but-rare story thing: they surprise. They skip past the quotidian, the merely real, to the essential, and do so with a spirit of tenderness and wonder that is wholly unique. They are (let me coin a phrase) July-esque, which is to say: infused with wonder at the things of the world." George Saunders, author of In Persuasion Nation

Review:

"A woman gives swimming lessons in her kitchen — of course! Miranda July can make anything seem normal in these truly original stories. She has first-rate comic timing and a generous view of the human condition. Maybe best of all, there's joy here, too, often where you would not expect to find it." Amy Hempel, author of The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel

Review:

"[T]he book is full of wistful, wonderful observations about the limits of connection, about the hopes and disappointments of intimacy....July has created a voice that is alive and winning and very funny as she struggles to answer their questions and, ultimately, ours." Los Angeles Times

Review:

"The problem with Ms. July's writing, of course, is that even her metaphors seem to indicate something about youth culture....Her voice is positioned as generational, and in fiction that can be distracting." New York Sun

Review:

"If the territory in No One Belongs Here More Than You seems familiar, her treatment of it is different, less coolly twee." New York Magazine

Review:

"July's is a distinctive aesthetic that, misread, can seem flip, pointless and cold....These stories are marked by an imagination that conjures the incredible, renders it mundane (often through sex) and captures an emptiness of modern spirit." The Oregonian

Review:

"July is a strange and compelling new voice; her worlds feel real and surreal and desperately sad and filled with what one character calls 'secret joy,' at the same time. And while there is often a frustrating air of utter self-absorption about many of these disconnected souls, their hearts are powerfully human." Seattle Times

Synopsis:

Screenwriter, director, and star of the acclaimed film Me and You and Everyone We Know, Miranda July brings her extraordinary talents to the page in a startling, sexy, and tender collection.

Synopsis:

Award-winning filmmaker and performing artist Miranda July brings her extraordinary talents to the page in a startling, sexy, and tender collection. In these stories, July gives the most seemingly insignificant moments a sly potency. A benign encounter, a misunderstanding, a shy revelation can reconfigure the world. Her characters engage awkwardly — they are sometimes too remote, sometimes too intimate. With great compassion and generosity, July reveals their idiosyncrasies and the odd logic and longing that govern their lives. No One Belongs Here More Than You is a stunning debut, the work of a writer with a spectacularly original and compelling voice.

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 5 comments:
kaylastarkiller, December 27, 2008 (view all comments by kaylastarkiller)
Simple, and beautifully written.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
(6 of 12 readers found this comment helpful)
lukas, July 1, 2008 (view all comments by lukas)
So are July's narrators supposed to be like mentally challenged or something? That's really the only explanation for these self-conscious, precious, & vacuous short stories. It seems to be working for her.
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(9 of 26 readers found this comment helpful)
sleepy_e, November 7, 2007 (view all comments by sleepy_e)
Wow! This was one of the best collections of stories to come along in a long time. Each one, not matter how sad it may ultimately be, is filled with such a sense of wonder.
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(21 of 38 readers found this comment helpful)
View all 5 comments

Product Details

ISBN:
9780743299398
Subtitle:
Stories
Author:
July, Miranda
Publisher:
Scribner Book Company
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Short Stories (single author)
Subject:
Short stories, American
Subject:
Stories (single author)
Copyright:
Edition Number:
1st
Publication Date:
May 15, 2007
Binding:
Hardcover
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Pages:
205
Dimensions:
817x582x89 85

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