jen_nej's review
challenging
emotional
funny
reflective
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
A strange and sometimes uncomfortable look into the lives of various characters and their usually private lives. Was I somewhat tense throughout? Yes. Did I read it in less than a day. Also yes.
a_violentfemme's review
4.0
I first read this collection 8 years ago and saw it sitting on my shelf last week and it called to me so this review is effected my my multi read status. This may not be the most well written collection of short fiction but it remains important to me even now. It was one of the first examples I discovered of literature including LGBT women and in a way I think it celebrates the mundane nature of life and the constant complicated nature of everyday relationships.
bbqrplanting's review
5.0
This was a wonderful compilation of short stories. July has the ability to create a wide palate of emotions from wonder to sadness to internal confusion. I identified to some degree with many of her quirky characters.
corneliadolian's review
2.0
I liked some of the stories. I didn't get much out of others. And then there were the ones that creeped me out..
July's voice is very dispassionate (she is after all a hipster princess), which works sometimes, but can get a bit trying at other times. It's like seeing everything through a haze of Xanax and a plexiglass wall. It's happening in front of you, but you're completely disconnected and there are both physical and chemical barriers to getting connected. For all the types of relationships tackled in this collection, all the love and complexity supposedly there, all the human emotion the situations would elicit, it still very often lacks warmth. There's a lot of potential for warmth, but it mostly goes unrealized.
Anyway, she also has some really beautiful descriptions and some winning characters. Sometimes her prose floored me, but that's hard to sustain.
I liked: "How to Tell Stories to Children", "Majesty", "The Sister", "Birthmark" and "The Boy from Lam Kien".
July's voice is very dispassionate (she is after all a hipster princess), which works sometimes, but can get a bit trying at other times. It's like seeing everything through a haze of Xanax and a plexiglass wall. It's happening in front of you, but you're completely disconnected and there are both physical and chemical barriers to getting connected. For all the types of relationships tackled in this collection, all the love and complexity supposedly there, all the human emotion the situations would elicit, it still very often lacks warmth. There's a lot of potential for warmth, but it mostly goes unrealized.
Anyway, she also has some really beautiful descriptions and some winning characters. Sometimes her prose floored me, but that's hard to sustain.
I liked: "How to Tell Stories to Children", "Majesty", "The Sister", "Birthmark" and "The Boy from Lam Kien".
gabesteller's review
4.0
Read some other Miranda July stories that were super funny and bizarre, and while non of these were quite at that level still pretty good! she's really a master of the 10 page or less vignette, although felt like some of the weirder longer stories (making love in 2003, ten true things) felt like maybe they'd evolved out of vignettes but gotten lost along the way. while the most conventional of the sotries (something that needs nothing) was like the strongest, tightest of the lot. Anyway pretty good!
emsemsems's review
4.0
Miranda July is fukin brilliant. No doubt about that. Holding back a star because I’m suffering from a bit of a literary indigestion. Some of the stories were a bit hard to stomach, personally. Mostly uncomfortable, but always clever. Love the style, love the tone, but I can’t help comparing it to Moshfegh’s. And Moshfegh – well, Moshfegh is one of my favourite writers. This collection of stories is not for everyone. I don’t even know if I could say that it’s something one has to ‘get used to’? Not an easily acquired taste for sure. Either you like it right away or you don’t/won’t; so if you can’t get through the first story, you probably won’t like the rest. RTC.