No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories

Upon reading this book i had this creepy feeling that Miranda July had been spying not only on my life but seeing through me and capturing my thoughts and feelings. It is comforting that there is someone in the universe that knows me and sees me and write personally for me. Of course she doesn’t. But this is my thorough experience of these stories.

How can you not love Miranda July? There is no artist/writer in the world like her. She is singular, and I describe people as such uber sparingly! I keep this book in my office and pick it up when I need to shake myself out of a creativity slump. I love the lens through which she looks at life at the world.

I'd been meaning to read this book for a long time. I've owned it for years and even started it twice, both times ultimately setting it aside in favor of something that seemed more interesting before I'd gotten so much as halfway through. I really enjoyed Miranda July's movie Me and You and Everyone We Know and wanted to give her book a fair shot by actually finishing it, so I buckled down and didn't stop until I'd turned the last page.My actual rating for No One Belongs Here More Than You is 3.5 stars, but that's not an option here so I've rounded it to 3 because for me it leans more in that direction than 4. I had a difficult time feeling transported by and getting lost in these stories. Probably my biggest issue was that I wanted them to come to more of a conclusion somehow, to have more of a point, or at least more of a payoff. The fact that every story seemed to just sort of fade out without much of a purpose seemed to give the book as a whole the feeling that IT lacked much of a purpose. There were some great moments throughout the book, I definitely highlighted multiple passages where July's use of language was particularly interesting/pretty/truthful. I enjoyed Birthmark the most, and also genuinely liked The Swim Team and The Sister. Something That Needs Nothing wasn't bad either. I half really enjoyed and half really didn't Making Love in 2003. The stories were unique, and July didn't seem afraid to write whatever the hell she felt like writing, whether that meant including a sort of super natural element or a controversial/taboo topic, and I appreciated the genre-defying nature of them. At the same time, there were also stories (like The Moves) that felt like they were mostly shocking for the sake of being shocking and ultimately didn't really go anywhere or say very much. I found myself feeling very `...okay, and?'It wasn't awful. Ultimately, I really just wanted this book to DO more.

This book isn't for everyone. It retains the same awkward feeling of her other works, and for some people, that doesn't sit well.Miranda July has this way of seeing everyday situations as extraordinary and immensely detailed - and that's how she writes as these characters. Some stories are just plain weird, others are amazing. All of them have something to offer and make you feel something different.The first story is actually my favorite, with my two favorite quotable items. One being about people of very different heights, and how it means more when they're romantically involved because they're "willing to go the distance".The reason I didn't give it 5-stars is because I feel a few stories lacked any connection whatsoever. They were still enjoyable to read, but not memorable.All in all, I love Miranda. She makes me feel a little more normal with each of her works.

Absolutely incredible. Miranda is amazing! Sexual content that may not be for the faint of heart but if you have no problem embracing that part of your humanity and feeling a little shocked, this book of stories is for you.

This might not be your best introduction to Miranda July. I'd suggest watching her movie Me and You and Everyone We Know first. If its brand of shocking yet sweet-hearted humor isn't your cup of tea, don't pick up this book. If, on the other hand, you love the film, think of this book as a must-read sequel.Her distinctive voice is as loud and clear as it could be here. I enjoyed every one of these 16 charming and hilarious pieces, laughing on every page and smiling on every paragraph.A typical excerpt: "If you are sad, ask yourself why you are sad. Then pick up the phone and call someone and tell him or her the answer to the question. If you don't know, call the operator and tell him or her. Most people don't know that the operator has to listen, it is the law."

The bad news is, if you don't like Miranda July, you won't like this book. Good news is that if you do like her, you will probably enjoy this quite a bit.

I liked this almost as much as The First Bad Man. Some of the stories got a little bit repetitive. May appeal if you like Chuck Palahniuk, like I do, but are also tired of him, like I am.

These short stories are eclectic in themes and styles, and yet, they work well together to form a moving yet unsettling organic whole.All the characters share a certain vulnerability and isolation, and admirably or pathetically try to break out of their situations, as they unabashedly reach out for any kind of connection with a fellow human being, sometimes at the expense of their own dignity and well-being.In the first story, “The Shared Patio”, a female tenant living upstairs tries to stake her claim on the patio with the unit downstairs by spending equal time as the tenants below do on it. It betrays her obsession with the couple, even as she rationalises why she would never be friends with the wife: “One reason Helena and I would never be close friends is that I am about half as tall as she. People tend to stick to their own size group because it’s easier on the neck. Unless they are romantically involved, in which case the size difference is sexy. It means I am willing to go the distance for you”.In “Majesty”, a woman who teaches earthquake survival classes to children has erotic dreams about Prince William, and “carried the dream around like a full glass of water, moving gracefully so [she] would not lose any of it”. However, in the course of the day where reality seems as surreal as her dreams, she meets a woman who loses her dog, and she in some way becomes indirectly connected to its death. She wanders in and out of her thoughts and ponders her deepest fears she lives through in her dreams: “This pain, this dying, this is just normal. This is how life is. In fact, I realize, there never was an earthquake. Life is just this way, broken, and I am crazy to hope for something else”.In the most moving story of the collection, “Something That Needs Nothing”, a teenager runs away from home with her best friend, Pip, and finds herself sinking further and further into destitution, and eventually total abandonment. Her extreme sense of loneliness and lack of anyone who cares for her shows as she reflects on how they made a surreptitious game of picking up stolen plywood left in the alley by Pip’s friend: “We were always getting away with something, which implied that someone was always watching us, which meant we were not alone in this world.”There are many more stories with characters and situations that struck me and haunted me long after I read their last lines. What impressed me most was the very convincing way the author managed to describe an unconventional belief a character may have and explain it so logically, that I felt totally drawn into their story world and even their whole belief system, in empathy with them, as they struggle on with their everyday lives.

Miranda July writes about odd people in an odd way. Her stories are engagingly comic-tragic. There is much dark humour and I was initially greatly entertained and at times moved by the quirks, neuroses and peculiarities of her people. About two thirds of the way through though, I did start to feel that although the characters changed, some male, some female, it was always the voice of Miranda July that dominated.The voice of a writer is necessary in poetry, but when it comes to fictional prose, in order for a story to be truly believable, the author needs to create characters, not BE characters. Here however, the stories are all in the voice of the author (only the names, gender and setting are changed). As such, although I recognised the humanity in her characterisations, I'm unable to believe that any of them could be based on anyone or anything beyond her own personal take on the world; so they lose that feeling of authenticity that is evoked by the truly great characters of fiction.It's a good book and worth reading (until you too feel it is getting 'samey'), but I don't feel inclined to buy into her world beyond this point.

I'm not really sure what to rate this book. I originally found out about the book from a reddit link to the author's website "I am going to create this entire website by writing on a whiteboard" - I was amused at the quirky originality of the entire promotional presentation that I thought I'd give the stories a try.What I found was a book that certainly had -some- of what I'd expect, reading the book's high praises in the reviews and on the cover. The storytelling is engaging, even compelling. The narrator's emotional state is clearly conveyed in each of the stories, creating a strong link between the storyteller and the reader. It is raw, emotional, and passionate. Many of the stories call up poignant images of things that you certainly wouldn't expect to find featured in a story. It is difficult to put into words; the private rituals of people behind closed doors, the emotional mind games we play each unto ourselves, even to go so far as to say the primal, primitive urges that surely everyone has but nobody admits. The characters in this book narrate through these dark secrets in the same sentence as discussing what's for lunch - nothing is taboo or treated with the sort of compartmentalization that you'd expect. Although the protagonist is different in every story, they all have this common feeling, of worthlessness, of despair, some of them overcome it and some of them don't. None of the stories are about the same thing but they are spun from a common thread.I would say, yes, pick this up, if for no other reason because the writing skill is second to none. I found some of the content to be perhaps, too overt, or "too much information", not so much that I felt disturbed but enough that I felt it was inappropriate or perhaps unnecessary to achieve the story's purpose. Then again, the mixed emotions I have after having read the book - twice through now - that stick with me even long after, means perhaps the author has achieved her purpose after all.

I read this collection for my book club, focusing on the story 'The Man on the Stairs' so my thoughts on this are followed by a broader reflection on the collection:The Man on the Stairs is an extended snapshot in a woman's life, in which a familiar (July gives it a tired, worn out feeling, like the T-shirt the woman is wearing, doubtless ugly and shapeless, unloved, a stultifying comfort-zone) sequence of introspection culminates in an encounter that takes on a mythical (as a focus for culturally cultivated fears and a seed of exasperated, unheroic (profoundly female) courage) and symbolic (of the emotional subjugation of women). It ends with what I felt was a victory, but one so bitter and compromised that I sobbed reading it, when the woman 'expel[s] the dust of everything' this subjugation has caused her to destroy in herself, and orders the phantom, the great unintentional criminal 'out of my house'. She can only muster a whisper, but we have to start somewhere.I cannot agree with reviewers who found July's stories 'laugh out loud funny'; I am horrified by the thought of someone laughing at the plights of her painfully unhappy protagonists. July's language stutters and chokes as each internal monologue unfolds its ugly revelations, almost as if recoiling in disgust.Loneliness, insecurity and ineptitude are the prominent features of adulthood here, and encounters that allow the narrators to offer care or fellowship to a child emphasise a contrast with their interactions with 'normal' people who treat them with varying degrees of disdain and disinterest. I don't think July invites laughter, rather that she is tenderly drawing out poison from a wound so deep it contaminates all of our interactions.Attempts to seek refuge and refreshment in the joyous diversions (in the sense of randomness and original thinking, an escape from the stale frameworks of normalised communication) of innocence are limited and compromised, and the grains of hope they contain are sometimes dashed, but there is the shadow of a feeling, maybe even a furious whisper, that things don't have to be this way.

I love this book. "The Swim Team" is my absolute favourite short story. I think Miranda July has an incredible skill for observation- using often banal everyday observations to create uncanny, eccentric imagined worlds.I found myself thinking about this book for years before I bought it. A friend of mine had read 'The Swim Team' to me, and although it is only a few pages, the story kept returning to me vividly. Some 6 years later I have bought the book, and shared it with many people.

I adore each and every story in this beautiful book.The style of prose and punctuation is sometimes sparse, often colloquial and seemingly casual in its execution, yet somehow each word gives the impression of having been carefully curated; the effect is that these short stories drip with poignancy and quirkiness. The author's aptitude for convincing, monologue-like voices makes it clear that these stories are set firmly (or perhaps loosely, either way) in the mindset of each of the beautiful but often marginalised protagonists.I have consumed this book quickly and with pleasure, and upon reaching the back of the book I quickly flipped back to the front to start reading again. It has been a true pleasure and I would truly recommend.

I love this book so much I keep buying it for my friends and they love it too.Also it's very beautiful.You should read it.

Never really read short stories before but really enjoyed this book. Led me to read her novel The First Bad Man straight after which I also enjoyed.

A superb collection of stories. Each story has an intriguing narrative and leaves the reader wanting more. But these are perfectly succinct, apt and beautiful stories. If you enjoy reading well-crafted contemporary writing that has edge and sensitivity this book could be very enjoyable for you too. One of my favourite 'discoveries' of the year so far.

I love Miranda July’s work, it makes me laugh and think and question. She is a must read.

Hard read

It takes a certain skill to render isolation both hilarious and tragic. It takes geniune talent to convey this combination within a single short story. And it takes genius - nothing added, nothing taken away genius - to pull this off in the space of a single paragraph, again and again and again. These stories will haunt you and make you laugh. And the real joy of them is this: by expressing isolation with such refreshing and startling clarity you will never feel so isolated again.

Oh she writes in a lovely way that seems easy but has a subtle lyrical quality to it. I've dipped in and out after a few stories. It feels like a nice antidote to some of the other dark things I read!

A very sweet read

:D