*New York Times Bestseller* The "brilliant, hilarious, irreverent, piercing" (O, The Oprah Magazine) debut novel from Miranda July, acclaimed filmmaker, artist, and writer.
Cheryl Glickman believes in romances that span centuries and a soul that migrates between babies. She works at a women's self-defense nonprofit and lives alone. When her bosses ask if their twenty-year-old daughter, Clee, can move into her house for a while, Cheryl's eccentrically ordered world explodes. And yet it is Clee--the selfish, cruel blond bombshell--who bullies Cheryl into reality and, unexpectedly, leads her to the love of a lifetime.
Tender, gripping, slyly hilarious, infused with raging sexual fantasies and fierce maternal love, Miranda July's first novel confirms her as a spectacularly original, iconic, and important voice today, and a writer for all time.
Industry Reviews
"The First Bad Man isa disorienting mash-up of tongue-in-cheek social commentary, a celebration ofoddball anti-heroines, and an embarrassingly honest look at the obsessions andentitlements we all (subconsciously or not) carry with us. I found myselflaughing and cringing in equal measure, and even if I don't totally understandeverything July is trying to say or do here, I've become a believer."-- "Bustle"
"The First Bad Man is the first great book of 2015... July's work istied together by her singular, confident, multifaceted voice. Her charactersare often unusual and under-confident; her writing is always the former andnever the latter. The First Bad Man, July's debut novel, tells the story of an outwardly boring person whoseinterior life is a mosaic of delightful neuroses and staggering self-doubt... beautifully worded, emotionally complex, impressively but quietly insightful, and, in the right light, so, so funny."-- "Josh Modell, The AV Club"
"The First Bad Man proves July's extraordinary adeptness at yetanother art form... by the novel's lovely, blissfully hopeful conclusion, she and Cheryl... earn our unexpected affection."-- "Cliff Froehlich, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch"
"July suffuses her narrative withcompassion... The First Bad Man is a terrific novel... an off-kilter, extremely smart meditation on sex, love, loneliness, and the demands of workand womanhood....engrossing, surprising, and emotionally true."-- "Eugenia Williamson, the Boston Globe"
"Miranda July -- filmmaker, performanceartist and now novelist -- is ready to leave the old Miranda July behind. Youknow the one: The curly haired gamin, her impossibly blue eyes swirling withideas. The irrepressible creative blowing cinematic kisses to the world...The First Bad Man is about to complicatethe picture. Striking and sexuallybold, it reveals a side that is darker and that, truth be told, has lurked inher work all along...Though TheFirst Bad Man actively challenges a reader's comfort zone, July creates afemale neurotic archetype that's familiar and fresh at once."-- "Margaret Wappler, Los Angeles Times"
"Miranda July's novel is abrilliant document of our age of managed sharing... The First Bad Man is a brave undertaking for July, and not justbecause it finds her committing to long-form storytelling without a visualelement for the first time. It incorporates a boldly feminist recasting offamiliar tropes and genres...Though this is her first novel, July is anaccomplished writer of short fiction, and within The First Bad Man live a handful of perfectly drawn shortstories...July has an enviable talent for sketching inner life as all-consuming...Within the context of the wider world--in which all speech is policed, butespecially women's stories about their uniquely feminine personal experiences--TheFirst Bad Man feelsvisionary... Few have Miranda July's...particular talent for couching whatfeel like naked, universal truths in clouds of the imagined and theimpossible."-- "Karina Longworth, Slate"
"I am in awe of Miranda July. She is the person I want to be, the artist who feels free to work in any number of media, the artist who is so talented, expressive. The First Bad Man is a book that must be read, a book that must be purchased - in duplicate - one for you, one for a friend. Don't think you can loan this book - you'll never get it back."--A. M. Homes, author of May We Be Forgiven
"Miranda July's exciting and wild novel The First Bad Man begins deeply, absurdly funny, gets increasingly twisted and strange, and then ends quietly, urgently heartfelt. It is a novel about aging, about motherhood, about sex, about weird wounded women--yes--but it is really a novel about the desperate possibility in all of us to love and be loved. The First Bad Man is like no other novel you will read this year (or any other year)."--Dana Spiotta, author of Eat the Document and Stone Arabia
"The 'yes, that's really the way it is!' moments in this book came so fast and furious that I found myself page-turningly propelled into a story that, despite its subtly off-kilter course, somehow -- I don't know how -- ended up revealing the invisible and depthless emotional reality that roils and tugs beneath us all. Miranda July's protagonist inhabits this uncharted world of unspeakable desires, embarrassing hopes and shifting conquests more fully than any in contemporary fiction I can recall, and you will inhabit it right along with her. You will also inhabit her. And she, you. The First Bad Man is a strange miracle of a book, and despite the opinion of its main character, a truly great American love story for our time."--Chris Ware, author of Building Stories
"Very funny... The novel exploded my expectations and became unlikeanything I've ever read...hilarious...like many of us, July seems to haveunbridled daydreams. Unlike most of us, she has wicked follow-through...July isexceptional at tracing the imaginative contours of sexuality... She is not afterperfection: She loves the raw edges of emotion, she likes people and things tobe a little worn. Life isn't silky, July is saying. The snags and the snafusbring the joy...The First Bad Man makesfor a wry, smart companion on any day. It's warm, it has a heartbeat and apulse. This is a book that is painfullyalive."--Lauren Groff, The New York Times Book Review
"With The First Bad Man, Miranda July provides an audaciously original, often hilarious map of the ever-expanding reach of unhinged imagination in America. With IMAX-scale emotional projections, a post-gay regimen of sexual fantasies, and a cast of riveting misfits worthy of Kurt Vonnegut, July takes us on a picaresque journey in which the heroine's ultimate challenge turns out to be a stunningly ordinary circumstance more transfixing than all the virtual caprices a 21st-century mind can muster."--Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon and Far from the Tree
