reviews books
The unfortunate denizens of Miranda July’s
debut collection of short stories, No One Belongs
Here More Than You, live in the discomfort of
The stories range from a young woman
strangers. Plagued by longing and loneliness,
who teaches swimming lessons to a trio of small-
July’s characters falter into absurd and often
town octogenarians with bowls of salt water in
painful situations in order to satisfy their need to
her living room, to a young female couple who
love, to be touched. This sense of longing marks
hustle and sell themselves in an unsuccessful
much of her previous work as a DIY scenester,
relationship, only to achieve intimacy through a
performance artist and indie filmmaker. Each
guise. These two stories represent two sides of
incarnation of (what’s increasingly becoming)
July’s approach. The first, titled ‘The Swim Team’,
the Miranda July juggernaut brings a new set of
attempts to create a set of quirky circumstances
acclaim and what book publishers call ‘crossover’,
(a microscopic town, peculiar old people, earnest
with the music leading to the art, generating
sadness) but grows tiresome and, by the last line,
interest for a website, that landed her the music
feels downright cloying. The writing itself, though
video, which helped raise money for the movie,
literary in terms of its ability to concoct interesting
that helps sell the book. If July started a television
sentences, is solid but unnoteworthy.
show or an architecture firm, she might have just
The second, called ‘Something That
about exhausted the spectrum of creative output.
Needs Nothing’, includes many of the same kind
Each venture wins her great success, from the
of distractingly quirky details, but the subtlety and
Whitney Biennial (twice) to the Camera d’Or at
nuance of the story and its execution overwhelms
Cannes, and though too early to tell, it’s likely she’ll
these devices to become what the cover copy
be nominated for a raft of fiction awards. This
promises, a strange story of longing, told with
series of circumstances begs a question that has
compassion and honesty. This book is what the
riven her relatively young indie-savvy audience:
author of a debut collection always hopes for; if
is she a genius polymath worthy of every iota
not mastery, then at the very least promise. No
of acclaim, or a precious, saccharine waif-cum-
One Belongs Here More Than You is definitely
corporation with a good spiel?
promising, but to become a serious writer like
Like all such controversies, the truth lies
the one she is most often compared to, Lorrie
somewhere in the middle. Hardly threatening
Moore, takes the time and sometime failure that
with her particular brand of erotic discomfort,
the busy July may not be able to crowbar into her
her recent book becomes a case to examine
schedule. Andrew Berardini
her aesthetic, and its relative success – critically,
commercially and formally.
NO ONe
BelONgs Here
MOre THAN YOu
by Miranda July
scribner, $23 (hardcover); Canongate books, £9.99 (paperback)
Artreview 140
September_books.indd 4 7/8/07 16:56:03
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