Miranda July

"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, slylyhilarious, 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"--

A Novel

The First Bad Man

Celine

It read: "Another year older? I can't bear to see!" And then on the inside: "Because what's happening to you, is happening to me." 

I followed the doctor across the room. I yearned for a lawyer and the right to make a phone call. But those rights were for ar- rested people. We got nothing. Whatever he told me would be the new reality and we'd just have to accept it. 

 My old disgust for her was just right there. […] I felt shame for my disgust. The shame felt like love.

No, no, I said quickly. "Let's wait. Until we both can." I iked this way of talking where the verbs were left out. Maybe we would never say them.

 Or maybe that was the point of love: not to think.

The First Bad Man quotes

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