Cheryl Glickman is a 40-something manager of Open Palm, a women’s self-defense studio that has morphed into a supplier of self-defense as exercise videos. Cheryl’s home life is turned upside-down when she, seemingly overnight, takes in as a housemate a 20-year-old daughter of her Open Palm bosses, Clee. Cheryl and Clee do not get along. In fact, their bouts of passive-aggressive violence, subterfuge and insults are nothing short of operatic. The relationship between Cheryl and Clee is typical fair for characters in a Miranda July story – that is to say, it’s at turns surprising, violent, sweet, and heart-breaking. To add to Cheryl’s drama, she’s in love with the much-older Phillip, who in turn is in love with a 16 year-old girl. July’s handling of Cheryl’s role in their relationship showcases what July does best as a writer: undercut discomfort and repulsion with an ingeniously weird sense of humor.
Your enjoyment of Miranda July’s first novel, The First Bad Man, hinges upon your feelings about July’s art in general. Maybe you read her collection of short stories No One Belongs Here More Than You and found them distractingly arty. Or maybe you’ve seen one or both of the two films she’s written and directed (You, Me and Everyone We Know and The Future) and found them refreshingly original, filled with weird but perceptive insights into humanity. Well, The First Bad Man is grade-A July, fitting in nicely with her previous work, for better or worse. I tend to put July’s best work into the “refreshingly original” category. If you only know her from her films, The First Bad Man definitely falls within that same framework: very odd people trying to forge connections with other people in their own peculiar ways. July doesn’t shy away from what can be strange and graphic content but it never seems gratuitous. This book is wholly original, hilarious and, like most of us, strangely human.