Publication
New York : Scribner, 2015.
ISBN
9781439172568
Language
Collections
Description
"Here is Cheryl, a tightly-wound, vulnerable woman who lives alone, with a perpetual lump in her throat. She is haunted by a baby boy she met when she was six, who sometimes recurs as other people's babies. Cheryl is also obsessed with Phillip, a philandering board member at the women's self-defense nonprofit where she works. She believes they've been making love for many lifetimes, though they have yet to consummate in this one. When Cheryl's bosses ask if their twenty-one-year-old daughter, Clee, can move into her house for a little while, Cheryl's eccentrically ordered world explodes. And yet it is Clee--the selfish, cruel blond bombshell--who bullies Cheryl into reality and, unexpectedly, provides her the love of a lifetime. Tender, gripping, slyly hilarious, infused with raging sexual obsession 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. The First Bad Man is dazzling, disorienting, and unforgettable"--… (more)
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User reviews
LibraryThing member ternary
This one is pretty weird. Filled (like, brimming) with difficult, painful, awkward dysfunction. Most of the characters' behavior was so strange (Cheryl's bosses, Cheryl's therapist, Phillip, even Clee for the first third of the book) that I started to imagine them being distorted as our perception
I rate it three Kubelko Bondys. Triplets. Whatever.
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of them passed through Cheryl's own crazy lens. I don't know. Pretty chaotic.I rate it three Kubelko Bondys. Triplets. Whatever.
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LibraryThing member Perednia
Cheryl Glickman may not know any of Barbara Pym's excellent women, but this protagonist of Miranda July's first novel is one of them. The middle-aged, never-married Cheryl lives on her own in a neatly appointed house that is no home, and works for a self-defense nonprofit organization that is as
This is a woman who thinks she knows herself, but she's as much a stranger to her as everyone else in the world. (Well, all perhaps one, but more of that later.) After all, she's the kind of woman who "strolled through the parking garage and into the elevator, pressing twelve with a casual, fun-loving finger. The kind of finger that was up for anything."
In a manner both droll and deft, July lays out Cheryl's sterile life and work. The part where the nonprofit's founders talked her into staying home most of the time, and out of their hair, is magnificent. Cheryl is clueless that her employers don't want her around but keep paying her anyway:
"Then he told me my managerial style was more effective from a distance, so my job was now work-from-home though I was welcome to come in one day for a week and for board meetings."
Perhaps that's because "Once Carl called me ginjo, which I thought meant 'sister' until he told me it's Japanese for a man, usually an elderly man who lives in isolation while he keeps the fire burning for the whole village". Or something like that.
Besides developing a housework system that involves doing no housework, Cheryl has two obsessions. One is a board member of the nonprofit who she thinks has been her great love in past lives. In this life, Phillip is a self-absorbed old man who occasionally texts or talks to her about his new obsession -- a much, much younger woman.
Her other obsession is a baby she met when she was a child. Cheryl thinks she had a conversation with this child, Kubelko Bondy, and that, appropriately enough for his last name, they bonded:
"I watched him crying and waited for someone to come but no one came so I heaved him onto my small lap and rocked his chubby body. He calmed almost immediately. I kept my arms around him and he looked at me and I looked at him and he looked at me and I knew that he loved me more than his mother and father and that in some very real and permanent way he belonged to me. ...
"Seconds later he sailed out into the night, my own dear boy. Never to be seen again.
"Except I did see him again -- again and again. Sometimes he's a newborn, sometimes he's already toddling along. As I pulled out of my parking spot I got a better look at the baby in the car next to mine. Just some kid."
When not doing whatever it is she does for the nonprofit, listening to Phillip dither over his young woman or searching for her dear boy, she deals with her globus. She has trouble swallowing and is nearly as obsessed with spitting discreetly as she is with her other obsessions.
Then her employers dump their unemployed daughter, Clee, on her lap. Everyone -- really, everyone -- who puts this young woman up is delighted to see her leave. Clee, of course, upsets Cheryl's world.
The novel then takes a wild turn. Then it gets weird. Then something big happens. And then something even bigger happens. There were times I wasn't sure I could keep on reading about Cheryl's interior life and how it was affecting what was going on with her unwelcome houseguest, let alone how life with her unexpected houseguest was affecting her interior life. Cheryl is unreliable not because she sets out to deceive the reader, but because she is so clueless about herself and her world. But she's certainly far more open to experiencing life as it comes to her than the closed-up woman who thinks she has a finger that is up for anything.
And then there is one of the sweetest, best realized endings to a novel in some time. It was unexpected, satisfying and exactly right.
It's not often an author can turn the course of a novel and have it work. For a debut novelist to do this more than once and still have it all work is unexpected. Reading The First Bad Man is like watching a high-wire artist perform magic tricks while jumping through hoops of fire. And coming out at the other end with everything in place.
July has published short stories and is an accomplished actress and filmmaker. Even with all the evidence of a creative free spirit who knows narrative and character, and how well they can work together, this novel is still a remarkable work to behold.
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New Age and California as anything that is New Age and in California can be.This is a woman who thinks she knows herself, but she's as much a stranger to her as everyone else in the world. (Well, all perhaps one, but more of that later.) After all, she's the kind of woman who "strolled through the parking garage and into the elevator, pressing twelve with a casual, fun-loving finger. The kind of finger that was up for anything."
In a manner both droll and deft, July lays out Cheryl's sterile life and work. The part where the nonprofit's founders talked her into staying home most of the time, and out of their hair, is magnificent. Cheryl is clueless that her employers don't want her around but keep paying her anyway:
"Then he told me my managerial style was more effective from a distance, so my job was now work-from-home though I was welcome to come in one day for a week and for board meetings."
Perhaps that's because "Once Carl called me ginjo, which I thought meant 'sister' until he told me it's Japanese for a man, usually an elderly man who lives in isolation while he keeps the fire burning for the whole village". Or something like that.
Besides developing a housework system that involves doing no housework, Cheryl has two obsessions. One is a board member of the nonprofit who she thinks has been her great love in past lives. In this life, Phillip is a self-absorbed old man who occasionally texts or talks to her about his new obsession -- a much, much younger woman.
Her other obsession is a baby she met when she was a child. Cheryl thinks she had a conversation with this child, Kubelko Bondy, and that, appropriately enough for his last name, they bonded:
"I watched him crying and waited for someone to come but no one came so I heaved him onto my small lap and rocked his chubby body. He calmed almost immediately. I kept my arms around him and he looked at me and I looked at him and he looked at me and I knew that he loved me more than his mother and father and that in some very real and permanent way he belonged to me. ...
"Seconds later he sailed out into the night, my own dear boy. Never to be seen again.
"Except I did see him again -- again and again. Sometimes he's a newborn, sometimes he's already toddling along. As I pulled out of my parking spot I got a better look at the baby in the car next to mine. Just some kid."
When not doing whatever it is she does for the nonprofit, listening to Phillip dither over his young woman or searching for her dear boy, she deals with her globus. She has trouble swallowing and is nearly as obsessed with spitting discreetly as she is with her other obsessions.
Then her employers dump their unemployed daughter, Clee, on her lap. Everyone -- really, everyone -- who puts this young woman up is delighted to see her leave. Clee, of course, upsets Cheryl's world.
The novel then takes a wild turn. Then it gets weird. Then something big happens. And then something even bigger happens. There were times I wasn't sure I could keep on reading about Cheryl's interior life and how it was affecting what was going on with her unwelcome houseguest, let alone how life with her unexpected houseguest was affecting her interior life. Cheryl is unreliable not because she sets out to deceive the reader, but because she is so clueless about herself and her world. But she's certainly far more open to experiencing life as it comes to her than the closed-up woman who thinks she has a finger that is up for anything.
And then there is one of the sweetest, best realized endings to a novel in some time. It was unexpected, satisfying and exactly right.
It's not often an author can turn the course of a novel and have it work. For a debut novelist to do this more than once and still have it all work is unexpected. Reading The First Bad Man is like watching a high-wire artist perform magic tricks while jumping through hoops of fire. And coming out at the other end with everything in place.
July has published short stories and is an accomplished actress and filmmaker. Even with all the evidence of a creative free spirit who knows narrative and character, and how well they can work together, this novel is still a remarkable work to behold.
Show Less
LibraryThing member LovingLit
I was really only reading this book to completion so that I could say with certainty that I did not like it. But then, I started to like it. It took about 2/3 of the book of not liking it before my opinion changed, and that first 2/3 did do some damage, but I actually ended up liking the main
The problems I had with the first sections of the book were almost all to do with the manufactured quirkiness of the prose, and the physical-fighting-for-arousal stuff the main character engaged in. But then it turned to a story with a different focus and I became engaged. That surprised me, and I am still quite confused about my overall feelings on the book. But...far from being a waste of my time, it was thought provoking and it kept me reading.
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character! This may shock some people, as Cheryl is a whacked out kook-ball with a very odd way of interacting with people. She also has some unorthodox methods for sexual gratification, but who am I to judge? Maybe I have too, to some people.The problems I had with the first sections of the book were almost all to do with the manufactured quirkiness of the prose, and the physical-fighting-for-arousal stuff the main character engaged in. But then it turned to a story with a different focus and I became engaged. That surprised me, and I am still quite confused about my overall feelings on the book. But...far from being a waste of my time, it was thought provoking and it kept me reading.
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LibraryThing member agnesmack
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. Do you need a white guy's opinion to believe me? Okay -
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. If you don't, you should skip this.
The story is super bizarre from the beginning and just gets weirder. Our protagonist is a woman who's lonely but doesn't seem to know it yet. 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. At first it's cutely weird. Then sort of puzzlingly weird. 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.
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.
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Roger Ebert named it one of the top five movies of the decade. 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. If you don't, you should skip this.
The story is super bizarre from the beginning and just gets weirder. Our protagonist is a woman who's lonely but doesn't seem to know it yet. 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. At first it's cutely weird. Then sort of puzzlingly weird. 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.
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.
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LibraryThing member flydodofly
Miranda July has gone and done it again - this is not simply a book, it is a whole new region filled with something in shape of a book. The words she uses are the very same we all use, but the way she looks at things and shows them is so much more different than most people's. I was horrified by
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some parts (this is where I deduct half a start, simply because I could not take it) and delighted by others, and I laughed - quite a lot - but most of all I liked that she got me not only thinking, but also feeling - possibly even some very real thoughts and feelings, based on the completely unbelievably over the top goings on in the book. It worked wonderfully. July is a skilled, smart writer and she delighted throughout. I would very much recommend anyone reading the book, just to see how they react and what it does to them. For me it worked like a visual piece of art works, not literature. Sadly, I cannot elaborate on this, but maybe you will see what I mean once you start reading it. It is not an easy reading piece, oh no - but life is actually too precious to be reading those anyway. Show Less
LibraryThing member LynnB
This is a difficult book to review. We have a story of a forty-something woman (Cheryl) who believes in past lives and transmigration of souls. We have her roommate Clee,who is foisted upon Cheryl by her bosses, who are Clee's parents. We have seventy-something Philip whom Cheryl seems to love but
My hesitation in recommending this book is that some of the characters seem totally unbelievable. I like good character development in my fiction. But I have to say that I loved the ending in spite of all the flaws in the characters and the strange plot.
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who is busy pursuing a sixteen-year-old girl. And strange new-age type psychiatrists. And lots of sex. My hesitation in recommending this book is that some of the characters seem totally unbelievable. I like good character development in my fiction. But I have to say that I loved the ending in spite of all the flaws in the characters and the strange plot.
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LibraryThing member andsoitgoes
This novel almost lost me in the beginning because I could not figure out what was going on. I'm glad I hung in there for this strange but beguiling story. Kind of saw the ending coming but I enjoyed the path to get there.
LibraryThing member bobbieharv
One of the strangest books I've ever read. Almost gave up at the beginning with all the physical abuse, till it metamorphosed into sexual love; almost gave up when the receptionist turned into a therapist until, surreally, she came out with some wise things; but by the end I sort of wished I had
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given up - not sure it's exactly my cup of tea. Very inventive cinematic but not quite great writing. Show Less
LibraryThing member RandyMetcalfe
Cheryl is isolated, unconnected to others (even her work colleagues; she works from home), unaccustomed to love and yet she is bursting with potential for sexual and maternal love most of which gets aired only in her imagination. When circumstance puts Cheryl in the way of new actualities (though
At once tender and tentative, July follows Cheryl through a year of changes, kooky changes you might say, in which Cheryl grows, adapts, and thoroughly transforms, but she still seems very much herself at the close. July’s fictional world is peopled with initially odd but genuinely caring individuals. Almost fancifully so. And that might be consistent with the near fairytale-like quality of this story. What we get here is an ethereal overview of love in a few peculiarly individual instantiations. You can’t help but fear for Cheryl, she seems to fragile and unable to defend herself. Yet July never places obstacles before her that she can’t overcome or that don’t dissolve as soon as she faces up to them. And you can’t help but wish that world were actually like this.
Of course, once you catch the cadence of July’s humour, you also find her writing to be immensely witty, indeed delightful. And that will undoubtedly be the impression you take away. Gently recommended.
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ones she hasn’t previously imagined), she has the good sense to follow her instincts and let love take its course, whatever that might be.At once tender and tentative, July follows Cheryl through a year of changes, kooky changes you might say, in which Cheryl grows, adapts, and thoroughly transforms, but she still seems very much herself at the close. July’s fictional world is peopled with initially odd but genuinely caring individuals. Almost fancifully so. And that might be consistent with the near fairytale-like quality of this story. What we get here is an ethereal overview of love in a few peculiarly individual instantiations. You can’t help but fear for Cheryl, she seems to fragile and unable to defend herself. Yet July never places obstacles before her that she can’t overcome or that don’t dissolve as soon as she faces up to them. And you can’t help but wish that world were actually like this.
Of course, once you catch the cadence of July’s humour, you also find her writing to be immensely witty, indeed delightful. And that will undoubtedly be the impression you take away. Gently recommended.
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LibraryThing member Susan.Macura
Cheryl is a middle-aged woman who enters into a relationship with a much younger woman. It starts off with violence, turns into a love relationship when the younger woman gets pregnant by an older man who was once Cheryl’s interest, then that relationship ends after the birth. However, Cheryl is
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left with the baby. Very strange but interesting book. Show Less
LibraryThing member mjlivi
This is either brilliant or crazy. Or both. July takes you on an intense and loopy journey, but all of it is with the aim of exploring her main character, a lonely and disillusioned middle-aged woman, who unexpectedly finds power and meaning via a series of events that are super strange. July is a
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lovely, quirky writer with an incredible imagination and an aching sympathy for her characters. Be prepared to be baffled, wowed and exhausted. Show Less
LibraryThing member reganrule
Warning: Spoilers. And very long.
Our narrator is Cheryl. She is middle-aged management at an organization that teaches self-defense,but which has expanded to include a popular self-defense workout regimen. Cheryl is the steady background in the lives of her coworkers. She is largely invisible to
Cheryl never seems to assert herself one way or the other. She understands herself as heterosexual, but she is so accustomed to not being looked at that it seems she's mostly forgotten it. She lives mostly in her head and in her very ordered and quiet home. She is not so much asexual as a result of her invisibility as she is auto-sexual. But "auto-sexual" doesn't quite capture her. She is no mere onanist; she is metasexual.
Take her "thing." The thing she likes to do (or imagine doing) during sex. She imagines the sex she is having and imagines the order of the room, and then she receives permission for her to "think about her thing" which allows her to imagine the order of the room and the sex, and then she receives permission to "think about her thing" anew, and so on. Her thing is a fantasy within a fantasy within a fantasy; her sexuality is the endless imagining the scene, but not the scene itself. She seems to know that even when she is flesh-and-bones in the scene she is not.
Clee, the imposing houseguest who disturbs the special order of Cheryl's tidy life, is the only person who looks at Cheryl. She sees her, but more rightly, she glares at her. Clee looks at Cheryl and doesn't like what she sees, and isn't afraid to tell her so. She tells Cheryl she is pathetic and sad, and, pathetically and sadly, Cheryl agrees.
But where the reader might expect the arc of the book to be Cheryl's undoing at the hands of an unlikely and churlish guest (and in many ways it IS that), Cheryl rallies. She turns the real aggression into a game. They allow themselves to fight. They discuss a fighting contract. They explore the game together. They memorize the lines and moves from Cheryl's self-defense videos. This is a kind of romance because playing WITH someone else is a joint and titillating exploration of boundaries.
I expected the relationship between Clee and Cheryl to turn sexual, but was still surprised by how and when it did. The first sexual thoughts Cheryl has about Clee come when Cheryl metasexually imagines herself as Phillip, the crush that forsook her for a 16-year-old. She imagines herself as Phillip, imagines his cock & then imagines fucking Clee, her own stand-in too-young-lover. She is Phillip everywhere and fucking everywhere. Even the garden snails become a part of her fantasy.
Clee senses all this, but then knows. Cheryl has crossed a boundary; she violates Clee in her fantasies. In truth, the real Phillip was fucking Clee after an encounter in the chromatologist's waiting room. (Did they recognize one another? Does Clee sleep with Phillip to secretly harm Cheryl? To punish her in action for what Cheryl violated in thought?) The affair between Clee and Phillip happens for Clee the way Cheryl had imagined it would happen for her. The chromatologist began as a pretext. Cheryl wrote the story, but it happened for someone else.
I jump ahead. Cheryl's initial sexual impulse for Clee is metasexual and indirect. Cheryl is never herself. She interpolates Phillip's desires. She violates Clee by making her a stand in for the "young lover." This is a game that Clee doesn't want to play.
Clee's pregnancy brings a halt to their aggressive relationship and ushers in a new era of platonic friendship. Cheryl "shapes" the baby by announcing biological developments. They hum Gregorian syllables to Clee's belly (which will eventually return as "their song"). Pregnancy becomes birth, and Cheryl recognizes the child as a Kubelko Bondy--a primordial baby that knows her, that has been reaching out to her since she was 9. Insofar as Clee planned to give the (unwanted) child up for adoption, the baby is truly more connected to Cheryl. Time & things alter in the post-labor hours; Clee's aggression has transformed to affection, & this is when the turn to sexuality finally happens, on the hospital bed.
Once again Cheryl makes a surprising decision and accepts it. Openly. She becomes proud of it, even though her relationship is alienating to her co-board members. She is willing to change her life for the promise of those kisses (sex hasn't happened yet). Despite her fastidiousness, Cheryl is most to most everything. As for actual sex, despite her rah-rah public enthusiasm, Cheryl is still trying to do "her thing." But she can't quite do it, because Clee is there with her body. So she tries her other "thing" (being Phillip), and that helps, but there is still Clee's body & its responses that make it impossible for Cheryl to reach climax (can Cheryl EVER reach climax?). In her fantasies it is an impossibly receding horizon.
Cheryl leaves Clee. Or asks her to leave. Clee is 20, Clee needs her space, Clee is too much to take care of in addition to a baby. The baby is Kubelko Bondy, truly; Cheryl has become its mother. Jack is connected to her, and it is right, to everyone, that she remain connected. She becomes legal guardian and Clee disappears. A reciprocal exchange. Clee gets her freedom and Cheryl is united, alone, with Kubelko Bondy. Even the grandparents refuse the title: "Let him come to us in the spirit of friendship and community later on in life."
Cheryl resumes her orderly life insofar as it can be orderly with a baby around. The "grandparents" note the silence. 7 months have passed since the birth and she's only non-verbally spoken with Kubelko Bondy. She begins to speak aloud, and the baby becomes Jack. Then Phillip arrives at her door with all of his INFORMATION. He is done with the young. He is ready to settle down. It is not Cheryl's and Phillip's baby, but it could be *like* it is. It could come full circle. She could do her thing. She could stop being Phillip's penis and feel Phillip's penis instead.
But Phillip has his own thing. She lets him do his thing, and then she tries to do her thing, but ends incompletely, as a metasexual encounter inevitably must. Cheryl cannot be satisfied, this much is clear. Her sexuality is boundless. When Phillip says she is both mother & father she pricks: I am mother.
Her satisfaction is in this, we suppose, but cannot know. She invites Phillip to leave. So that she can be everything.
She gets what she always wanted. A Kubelko Bondy. Clee gets what she wants: freedom. Phillip has come too little, too late. Whatever happens in the interim, when we finally see them it is as in the first story she told Jack--a running to greet each other after presumably much time and space. And Clee is there. How, and in what capacity, we are left to wonder. Did they reunite or do they continually reunite throughout history to see the child? Is it as Cheryl imagined, or has it happened in spite of all her imaginings?
Our narrator is Cheryl. She is middle-aged management at an organization that teaches self-defense,but which has expanded to include a popular self-defense workout regimen. Cheryl is the steady background in the lives of her coworkers. She is largely invisible to
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them, and she doesn't seem to mind. When they do see her, they see her as a profound neutral: neither here nor there. The man she fantasizes about in reality tells her that she is neither masculine nor feminine. Her halves are (appear to be?) "balanced." She receives this blankly. In the world Cheryl occupies, of dojos (and eventually of chromatologists, play therapists and rebirthing therapies) this is perhaps a compliment (I almost wrote "complement" which is more to the point): she is both yin and yang. Cheryl never seems to assert herself one way or the other. She understands herself as heterosexual, but she is so accustomed to not being looked at that it seems she's mostly forgotten it. She lives mostly in her head and in her very ordered and quiet home. She is not so much asexual as a result of her invisibility as she is auto-sexual. But "auto-sexual" doesn't quite capture her. She is no mere onanist; she is metasexual.
Take her "thing." The thing she likes to do (or imagine doing) during sex. She imagines the sex she is having and imagines the order of the room, and then she receives permission for her to "think about her thing" which allows her to imagine the order of the room and the sex, and then she receives permission to "think about her thing" anew, and so on. Her thing is a fantasy within a fantasy within a fantasy; her sexuality is the endless imagining the scene, but not the scene itself. She seems to know that even when she is flesh-and-bones in the scene she is not.
Clee, the imposing houseguest who disturbs the special order of Cheryl's tidy life, is the only person who looks at Cheryl. She sees her, but more rightly, she glares at her. Clee looks at Cheryl and doesn't like what she sees, and isn't afraid to tell her so. She tells Cheryl she is pathetic and sad, and, pathetically and sadly, Cheryl agrees.
But where the reader might expect the arc of the book to be Cheryl's undoing at the hands of an unlikely and churlish guest (and in many ways it IS that), Cheryl rallies. She turns the real aggression into a game. They allow themselves to fight. They discuss a fighting contract. They explore the game together. They memorize the lines and moves from Cheryl's self-defense videos. This is a kind of romance because playing WITH someone else is a joint and titillating exploration of boundaries.
I expected the relationship between Clee and Cheryl to turn sexual, but was still surprised by how and when it did. The first sexual thoughts Cheryl has about Clee come when Cheryl metasexually imagines herself as Phillip, the crush that forsook her for a 16-year-old. She imagines herself as Phillip, imagines his cock & then imagines fucking Clee, her own stand-in too-young-lover. She is Phillip everywhere and fucking everywhere. Even the garden snails become a part of her fantasy.
Clee senses all this, but then knows. Cheryl has crossed a boundary; she violates Clee in her fantasies. In truth, the real Phillip was fucking Clee after an encounter in the chromatologist's waiting room. (Did they recognize one another? Does Clee sleep with Phillip to secretly harm Cheryl? To punish her in action for what Cheryl violated in thought?) The affair between Clee and Phillip happens for Clee the way Cheryl had imagined it would happen for her. The chromatologist began as a pretext. Cheryl wrote the story, but it happened for someone else.
I jump ahead. Cheryl's initial sexual impulse for Clee is metasexual and indirect. Cheryl is never herself. She interpolates Phillip's desires. She violates Clee by making her a stand in for the "young lover." This is a game that Clee doesn't want to play.
Clee's pregnancy brings a halt to their aggressive relationship and ushers in a new era of platonic friendship. Cheryl "shapes" the baby by announcing biological developments. They hum Gregorian syllables to Clee's belly (which will eventually return as "their song"). Pregnancy becomes birth, and Cheryl recognizes the child as a Kubelko Bondy--a primordial baby that knows her, that has been reaching out to her since she was 9. Insofar as Clee planned to give the (unwanted) child up for adoption, the baby is truly more connected to Cheryl. Time & things alter in the post-labor hours; Clee's aggression has transformed to affection, & this is when the turn to sexuality finally happens, on the hospital bed.
Once again Cheryl makes a surprising decision and accepts it. Openly. She becomes proud of it, even though her relationship is alienating to her co-board members. She is willing to change her life for the promise of those kisses (sex hasn't happened yet). Despite her fastidiousness, Cheryl is most to most everything. As for actual sex, despite her rah-rah public enthusiasm, Cheryl is still trying to do "her thing." But she can't quite do it, because Clee is there with her body. So she tries her other "thing" (being Phillip), and that helps, but there is still Clee's body & its responses that make it impossible for Cheryl to reach climax (can Cheryl EVER reach climax?). In her fantasies it is an impossibly receding horizon.
Cheryl leaves Clee. Or asks her to leave. Clee is 20, Clee needs her space, Clee is too much to take care of in addition to a baby. The baby is Kubelko Bondy, truly; Cheryl has become its mother. Jack is connected to her, and it is right, to everyone, that she remain connected. She becomes legal guardian and Clee disappears. A reciprocal exchange. Clee gets her freedom and Cheryl is united, alone, with Kubelko Bondy. Even the grandparents refuse the title: "Let him come to us in the spirit of friendship and community later on in life."
Cheryl resumes her orderly life insofar as it can be orderly with a baby around. The "grandparents" note the silence. 7 months have passed since the birth and she's only non-verbally spoken with Kubelko Bondy. She begins to speak aloud, and the baby becomes Jack. Then Phillip arrives at her door with all of his INFORMATION. He is done with the young. He is ready to settle down. It is not Cheryl's and Phillip's baby, but it could be *like* it is. It could come full circle. She could do her thing. She could stop being Phillip's penis and feel Phillip's penis instead.
But Phillip has his own thing. She lets him do his thing, and then she tries to do her thing, but ends incompletely, as a metasexual encounter inevitably must. Cheryl cannot be satisfied, this much is clear. Her sexuality is boundless. When Phillip says she is both mother & father she pricks: I am mother.
Her satisfaction is in this, we suppose, but cannot know. She invites Phillip to leave. So that she can be everything.
She gets what she always wanted. A Kubelko Bondy. Clee gets what she wants: freedom. Phillip has come too little, too late. Whatever happens in the interim, when we finally see them it is as in the first story she told Jack--a running to greet each other after presumably much time and space. And Clee is there. How, and in what capacity, we are left to wonder. Did they reunite or do they continually reunite throughout history to see the child? Is it as Cheryl imagined, or has it happened in spite of all her imaginings?
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LibraryThing member kremsa
A very strange novel. Initially the strangeness was intriguing but towards the middle it got a little too weird and disturbing. I stuck with it and it did getter better towards the end but not enough for me to recommend this as a must read.
LibraryThing member jonerthon
The writing style here reminded me a bit of Sally Rooney, where the characters experience major dramatic events with absolutely no suspense or lead-in, and you get taken for an emotional ride. But I also would say what's unique about this title is the difficulty in pinning it down in one genre; it
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has elements of dystopian science fiction but also thriller/mystery components, all while having an unconventional sort of romance come out of nowhere for a character in a very run-of-the-mill life very much in contemporary America. If you ever watched Me and You and Everyone We Know (also written by July), the fantasy in reality may seem familiar. When I saw it in 2007, I described it as "more about crazy people in everyday life than any sort of plot," which fits this book as well. Show Less
LibraryThing member blackrabbit89
There are very few books that I would classify as “weird,” but Miranda July’s The First Bad Man is one of them. My partner, to whom I read this book aloud, was over it by the time we were halfway through; it was too strange for her. I, on the other hand, found it absolutely hilarious and
Our main character is Cheryl Glickman, a middle-aged woman who works for a nonprofit that produces self-defense “exercise” videos for women. She lives alone. Her days have an extremely ordered, almost ascetic routine. She consistently has a lump in her throat. She has a huge crush on her coworker, Phillip, although as it turns out, he is pursuing an underage girl and seeking Cheryl’s permission to consummate the relationship. She believes that she has a special connection with a baby she has named Kubelko Bondy, whose spirit occasionally appears in other people’s babies to commune with her. Cheryl seemed to me to be unapologetically weird. While I loved her for this, I also despised her a little bit.
When Cheryl is “forced” to provide lodging in her home for her boss’s 20-year-old daughter, Clee, life becomes messy. Clee, while beautiful, is messy—and dirty, and downright mean, and soon she begins to beat Cheryl up. Cheryl unexpectedly fight back, and she finds that she enjoys it. Her therapist (who pees in Chinese takeout containers in her office to avoid making the long trek to the bathroom) introduces her to the idea of adult games. Inspired, Cheryl studies self-defense videos so that she and Clee can recreate the scenarios in her house. Soon, of course, the relationship becomes sexual, and Cheryl’s life is turned even further upside down.
I loved this novel because nothing happened as I expected, yet it all seemed to fit in the context of the universe that July created. Cheryl, while very strange, is also incredibly human in a way that I have never found another character to be. I found myself mentally mocking her quirks, while secretly thinking, I could see myself doing that. And, above all, the entire novel is just plain funny.
If you’ve got any appreciation at all for the strange and hilarious, I highly recommend The First Bad Man. It’s a unique and highly enjoyable reading experience.
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oddly touching, so I finished it by myself.Our main character is Cheryl Glickman, a middle-aged woman who works for a nonprofit that produces self-defense “exercise” videos for women. She lives alone. Her days have an extremely ordered, almost ascetic routine. She consistently has a lump in her throat. She has a huge crush on her coworker, Phillip, although as it turns out, he is pursuing an underage girl and seeking Cheryl’s permission to consummate the relationship. She believes that she has a special connection with a baby she has named Kubelko Bondy, whose spirit occasionally appears in other people’s babies to commune with her. Cheryl seemed to me to be unapologetically weird. While I loved her for this, I also despised her a little bit.
When Cheryl is “forced” to provide lodging in her home for her boss’s 20-year-old daughter, Clee, life becomes messy. Clee, while beautiful, is messy—and dirty, and downright mean, and soon she begins to beat Cheryl up. Cheryl unexpectedly fight back, and she finds that she enjoys it. Her therapist (who pees in Chinese takeout containers in her office to avoid making the long trek to the bathroom) introduces her to the idea of adult games. Inspired, Cheryl studies self-defense videos so that she and Clee can recreate the scenarios in her house. Soon, of course, the relationship becomes sexual, and Cheryl’s life is turned even further upside down.
I loved this novel because nothing happened as I expected, yet it all seemed to fit in the context of the universe that July created. Cheryl, while very strange, is also incredibly human in a way that I have never found another character to be. I found myself mentally mocking her quirks, while secretly thinking, I could see myself doing that. And, above all, the entire novel is just plain funny.
If you’ve got any appreciation at all for the strange and hilarious, I highly recommend The First Bad Man. It’s a unique and highly enjoyable reading experience.
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LibraryThing member nancyjean19
I wasn't sure how Miranda July's quirky characters would be sustained into a full novel since so many of her stories are just a few pages long -- and there's more than enough weirdness in those pages. But I thought this novel was very well paced and balanced peculiar character details with
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relatable ones. I never felt like the strangeness of the story derailed the book, and its beating heart sustained a kind of warmth for the length of the novel. Show Less
LibraryThing member ShannonRose4
"Then I realized that we all think we might be terrible people. But we only reveal this before we ask someone to love us."
In this first novel, Miranda July takes us by the heart and hand at race car speed to places you may never want to visit but you don't want to miss.
In this first novel, Miranda July takes us by the heart and hand at race car speed to places you may never want to visit but you don't want to miss.
LibraryThing member Ken-Me-Old-Mate
I'd describe this as The Diary of Adrian Mole (13 1/2) meets Bridget Jones Diary meets The Diary Of A Nobody. If that sounds too much it probably is. It would have been so easy to give up on this in the first part of the book. But I am so glad I didn't.
What a surpising book this is, it goes from
Try it!
What a surpising book this is, it goes from
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complete crap to a really good read in one smooth easy read.Try it!
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LibraryThing member arosoff
This book comes with a massive burden of hype, from the breathless jacket copy to the rave reviews on the back. 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. It's not entirely fair to Miranda July that I had to
If you're going to read this book, which isn't a bad idea, don't read any reviews or jacket copy. You'll probably enjoy it more.
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work against inflated expectations because this is a good book; it just didn't change my life. The problem is that contrary to the jacket copy, it isn't terribly daring or audacious or unique. It's not shocking, though it tries to be. It's well written; the language has verve and the descriptions are accurate and witty, but the targets are predictable. Chromotherapy, Western cultural appropriation, home birth, pretending to be a nonprofit. About the only false note was the narrator doing her shopping in Ralphs. Instead of feeling like a knowing satire, a joke shared between author and audience, it felt stale. 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. If you're going to read this book, which isn't a bad idea, don't read any reviews or jacket copy. You'll probably enjoy it more.
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LibraryThing member hipney
Still not sure what I have just read. This book did not speak to me they way it clearly does to other people.
LibraryThing member steve02476
Short novel, very weird, very funny in places. Sweet and nerdy and kinky, what a strange combination.
LibraryThing member SoubhiKiewiet
I've never read anything quite like this. At the beginning I was sure Cheryl was certifiable. Almost should be locked up kind of crazy. By the end she had grown on me, but she definitely still wasn't anywhere near normal.
I didn't love this, but it was interesting and different and I didn't hate it
I didn't love this, but it was interesting and different and I didn't hate it
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either. Show Less
LibraryThing member KLmesoftly
The details here are bizarre but there's an emotional realness and depth that really grounds the story and keeps the weirdness from becoming a gimmick. I would compare it to A Confederacy of Dunces (though the protagonist is far more likable) and even some of Chuck Palahniuk's writing through the
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more transgressive, sexual passages. Show Less
LibraryThing member mimo
I don't know what to make of this story; it was certainly strange and unique. I enjoyed consuming it though.
Awards
Lambda Literary Award (Finalist — 2016)
James Tait Black Memorial Prize (Shortlist — Fiction — 2015)
Center for Fiction First Novel Prize (Longlist — 2015)
The Observer Book of the Year (Fiction — 2015)
The A.V. Club best books (2015)
Globe and Mail Top 100 Book (2015)
Los Angeles Public Library Best of the Year (Fiction — 2015)
Original publication date
2015