Title: The First Bad Man Author: Miranda July
Published: January 13, 2015
Genre(s): Literary Fiction
Page Count: 288
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads: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 non-profit 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.
This book is weird. There’s no other way to put it. The First Bad Man is weird and nonsensical and a little disquieting. It’s quirkiness at its quirkiest. Honestly, I didn’t think I could finish it because the characters and situations were just too out there most of the time. But the important thing is that in spite of all the strangeness, Miranda July does a good job with it all, and beneath the absurdity is truth, about people and relationships and interactions. I can’t see something like this happening in real life, but I almost can.
At its core, The First Bad Man is about Cheryl and Clee and their strange, difficult relationship. Clee is at first an unwanted houseguest, but over the course of the novel she takes on new roles—aggressor, mother, lover, former lover. And Cheryl, the narrator, navigates the tension and shifts in relationship while dealing with various other crises (like developing a mental phallus with which she repeatedly fantasizes about penetrating Clee). The two women are quirky and a little disgusting, and it’s not a “nice” relationship they share. Yet throughout the story there’s an underlying realness to their interactions that is perhaps enhanced by the author’s zany approach to storytelling and characters.
The most definitive thing I can say about this is that it’s the sort of book one has to read and experience for oneself. The First Bad Man is wacky and explicit and completely unique. It was a bit of an acquired taste, but by the end I really liked and appreciated what the author had done, and in my own way, I was almost fond of Cheryl and Clee.
