If you want to read a book that will really get in your head, that will make you uncomfortable, and will make you look at the world just a little bit differently, then this is a book to pick up. And then there came a point when I was like, 'Holy shit, Miranda, really? This is FUCKED UP.' But I kept reading anyway because it's not beautiful and lovely in spite of this fucked-upedness, it's beautiful and lovely because of it. She has a lot of weird, complicated 'systems' (re: rituals) and lives her life in a very specific and bizarre way, so when her bosses convince her (re: bully her) into allowing their daughter to live with her, well, things get interesting.And by interesting I mean that this shit is FUCKED UP. Our protagonist is a woman who's lonely but doesn't seem to know it yet. If you don't, you should skip this.The story is super bizarre from the beginning and just gets weirder.

So she's a great filmmaker, but is she a great novelist? Oh holy cow is she ever! The audience for The First Bad Man is the exact audience for her movies so if you like her movies, you're in luck. Do you need a white guy's opinion to believe me? Okay - Roger Ebert named it one of the top five movies of the decade. I love Miranda July's movies: Back and forth forever, you know? If you don't know what I'm talking about, you should get on that, because Me You and Everyone We Know is one of the most bizarre, sweet, lovely, horrifying movies I've ever seen. If you're going to read this book, which isn't a bad idea, don't read any reviews or jacket copy. The sex tried too hard to be shocking-though again this is a problem of expectations if you tell the reader it's going to be dirty, the reader is only going to be disappointed it wasn't as dirty as she thought it would be. Instead of feeling like a knowing satire, a joke shared between author and audience, it felt stale. About the only false note was the narrator doing her shopping in Ralphs. Chromotherapy, Western cultural appropriation, home birth, pretending to be a nonprofit. It's well written the language has verve and the descriptions are accurate and witty, but the targets are predictable.

It's not shocking, though it tries to be. The problem is that contrary to the jacket copy, it isn't terribly daring or audacious or unique.

It's not entirely fair to Miranda July that I had to work against inflated expectations because this is a good book it just didn't change my life. There are very few books that can live up to a 'best book you'll ever read' level of hype and unsurprisingly this one doesn't, either. This book comes with a massive burden of hype, from the breathless jacket copy to the rave reviews on the back.

The first bad man novel