She performed it at venues around the country, including the New York Video Festival, The Kitchen, and Yo-yo a Go-go in Olympia. These stories are swift aching, almost unbearably intense flares of emotion and lyrical language, sent out into the existential darkness of everyday life. 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.

We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. In ‘This Person’ a woman discovers her life has been just a rehearsal when she finds ‘a long rambling phone message in which every person this person has ever known is talking on a speakerphone and they are all saying, You have passed the test, it was all just a test.I swear to Christ if I read one more slim selfsatisfied volume of "witty" short fiction where everybody talks like a fucking Grad Student I'm going to hit myself in the brain with a ballpeen hammer until I'm illiterate.

As though watching the unfolding episodes of a reality TV show, we witness their humiliating encounters not knowing whether to laugh, cry or squirm. And the man who paid this person two thousand dollars to have sex with him three times when this person was very broke. Her performances were successful; she has been quoted as saying she has not worked a day job since she was 23 years old.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 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.To make it more impressive, she manages to do this and keep the stories concise at the same time; while admittedly most of the characters come to assume similar voices, she nonetheless creates complex, unique narratives in often fewer than ten pages. july’s style is very reminiscent of emma cline/ottessa moshfegh (or maybe the other way around as she published first lol) which i inherently enjoy.

It's hard to rate a book of short stories like this one, some of them were a straight out 1, others were a 5. Because if you read more than three stories in a row, you start to get this very odd sensation that you will be alone and unhappy for the rest of your life, and it is not pleasant. But now they are simply saying it, I love you, and the chemistry and PE teachers are also saying it and this person can tell they really mean it.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.