Miranda July is one of those annoying people who seems to be able to turn their hand to just about anything. Artist, musician, filmmaker, actress, writer, all around smarty-pants; and on top of all that, with those piercing blue eyes and slender figure, she's also quite beautiful. Those that wish ill on such people, and hope that their future projects fail, will be disappointed by reading this collection of 16 stories, as they are actually quite wonderful.
They bare in common with all her work, a focus on human interactions, the need that people have to connect with other people, and the difficulties that this often entails. Her characters are not restricted to the normal, the everyday, in fact quite the opposite is true, her characters are anything but average. Of course, what is normal? Are people like the characters portrayed in television soap operas and Hollywood movies, or are they more like you and me and everyone we know?
The stories involve shared patio rosters, swimming lessons for the elderly held in the teacher's living room, a middle-age woman's obsession with Prince William, a paedophilia's homosexual relationship with his Hispanic workmate via his imaginary teenage sister, pre-teen lesbian sex, nudie booths, a secretary of a fake accountant, and a father passing on sexual techniques to his daughter. Although these things are not everyday occurrences, the emotions involved are. The more bizarre and unusual the story, the more it highlights the commonality of human experience and emotion. It is not often that one feels empathy with a pedophile, yet July's deeply human writing achieves this.
Surprising, original, sexy, romantic, funny, moving and above all else human, July's first collection of short stories is a complete joy. Placed alongside her award winning debut feature film ‘Me and You and Everyone We know’ (2005) and projects such as ‘Learning to Love You More’ (with Harrell Fletcher) the stories take on a greater significance and signal July as being an artist to expect great things of.
This, That, and Other Bits and Bobs
