Tag: miranda july

All Fours by Miranda July

Sara Crowley1 Comment

Miranda July is always interesting and writes with appealing and strange honesty. To read a novel where the narrator is an intelligent middle-aged woman , independent and even (gasp) sexual, is a treat. How many novels have been written where an old male professor of literature or similar has an active sex life with a younger woman – yawn. All Fours shouldn’t feel so unique but is. The narrator is supposed to go to New York for a 3 week work trip and is persuaded to drive – road trip! Instead, she only makes it to a nearby town where she spots a handsome young guy working in Hertz. She holes up in a motel for the night and then…  just stays.

This quote stopped me and had me sending it to my pals in one of those glorious connection moments with the note “THIS! Exactly this” – “If birth was being thrown energetically up into the air, we aged as we rose. At the height of our ascent we were middle-aged and then we fell for the rest of our lives, the whole second half. Falling might take just as long, but it was nothing like rising. The whole time you were rising you could not imagine what came next in your particular, unique journey; you could not see around the corner. Whereas falling ended the same way for everyone.”
This is a novel about someone examining aging, being a mum, wife, creative artist, friend, taking pause to look at who they are and reconnecting with themselves. It’s also about a peri-menopausal woman having a fierce crush and exploding into their desires.

 I mean, it’s bonkers and all written from a point of monied privilege: the narrator can afford to take this time for personal growth and exploration thanks to a wealthy husband and personal success in an opaque arts related field,. They can leave their child and husband for 3 weeks and then reshape their life. They can pay to have a shabby motel room redecorated in an expensive plush replica of the fanciest of hotel rooms. It’s not relatable. Her lifestyle doesn’t have to be though, it’s enough that these thrilling words are written. The ending wasn’t satisfying for me, but who cares? I love that July writes this messy, complicated, eccentric stuff. Long may she continue.

No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July

Sara Crowley7 Comments

The front cover of this collection of short stories has one of those Egger quotes on top. He says the book is “incredibly charming, beautifully written, frequently laugh-out-loud funny.” His quote continues on the inside cover and says that fans of “Lorrie Moore should rub this book all over themselves,” which is actually a stupid thing to say when taken literally!
Anyway, I hadn’t heard of July, despite her apparent fame as director of the film ‘You Me and Everyone We Know’ but you my love of Lorrie Moore and Dave Eggers combined to make this a must buy.

(Oh, incidentally, July made a promo for it which was shots of writing on top of her fridge that said basically buy this book. It felt to me like try too hard to be DIY indie cool, and actually put me off.)

It is impossible for me to review the book without using the work quirky. There it is, dammit, this book is a collection of QUIRKY short stories. The snarky short story writer that is me feels bitchy and wonders if I had subbed any of these tales would I have had them placed in McSweeney’s, The New Yorker et al. Or is it just that her achingly cool connections get her the kind of respect I dream of?

So, to the stories themselves. This is where I admit that I was utterly charmed by her voice. Her characters are lonely, uneasy, searching. They are normal people doing normal things that then slide into oddness. There is humour and sadness in them, but there is also an essential feeling of hope.

In ‘I kiss a door’ the narrator tells us in just over 4 pages her discovery of a shocking truth about her friend. July has great skill in choosing just the right words to breezily explain something that could have been laboured and over written and made so much more complex. This is her greatest talent I think, her ability to use dialogue or to invite us in to her characters mind and tell us things with deceptive ease. Several times I thought, wow, that’s so clever.

‘Something That Needs Nothing’ begins with this;
“In an ideal world, we would have been orphans. We felt like orphans and we felt deserving of the pity that orphans get, but embarrassingly enough, we had parents. I even had two.”

I think that gives the flavour of all the pieces, the narrator telling us something personal, a little strange and yet it feels like truth.

On the down side the voice sounds the same no matter who the narrator is supposed to be, but it is an intriguing and eminently readable voice!

There is a slight unevenness to the quality of the stories, I thought some much more effective than others, but it is good, it’s thought provoking, fun and witty. And it turns out that Miranda July is talented and sparkly and thoroughly deserving of her publications and I am just jealous!