Overall rating: 4/5
I am not normally one for short stories. And when I say not normally one, I just haven’t delved into many because of a preconceived idea that I wouldn’t get as much out of them as a novel. I don’t know where I got this from, but it’s always been at the back of my mind. Saying that, July’s collection, No One Belongs Here More Than You, hit me like a tonne of bricks.
A good friend of mine is the biggest Miranda July fan on this here earth and she pressed The First Bad Man into my hands last summer and ordered me to read it. I wasn’t a huge fan in all honesty. But the things I disliked about The First Bad Man – the whacky-to-the-point-of-irritation range of characters and the often unbelievable behaviour – are among the things that I loved about No One Belongs Here More Than You. The brief snapshot of these insane but at the same time completely run-of-the-mill melancholy lives is beautiful – it’s like Extreme People Watching.
July doesn’t use language that is typically ‘beautiful’ – I found it beautiful in a way that made me look at life, and the way life can be valued, more simply. This sounds overly philosophical, but there is such a range of experiences in the pages of No One Belongs Here More Than You, many of which centre around pretty desperate characters, but a steady voice remains throughout. This could be described as a flaw – that July’s writing doesn’t alter much between the characters – but I actually liked this. To me it felt like this constant narrative style tied the stories central themes of loneliness together and was indicative of the human condition. Sort of like, no matter what happens to you, we all feel the same.
My favourite of the stories was Something That Needs Nothing, which focuses on two runaway girls who are lovers – after her lover leaves, one of them ends up working in a one-person live sex show in the back of a sex shop. Others freaked me out, like The Shared Patio, The Man on the Stairs and Birthmark – actually that’s quite a few – and some didn’t stand out to me, like The Swim Team. I think any short story collection is quite difficult to rate as some stories chime with you more than others, but overall these are outstanding.
Now I’ve just got to get past the awkwardness of a colleague I don’t know very well asking me to borrow it. Hope they don’t mind graphic sex scenes.
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