Like reading a train-wreck. Generally disliked the predictable disappointing characters, which made it hard to enjoy this book so full of emotion. ( )

stories: The Shared Patio / The Swim Team / Majesty / The Man on the Stairs / The Sister / This Person / It Was Romance / Something That Needs Nothing / I Kiss a Door / The Boy from Lam Kien / Making Love in 2003 / Ten True Things / The Moves / Mon Plaisir / Birthmark / How to Tell Stories to Children

I feel like I say this a lot about contemporary short stories, but it still applies: these are vignettes more than stories. They're compelling, and there are turns of phrase and passages I really loved and will return to...but they just end. This can be really frustrating. I'm starting to think anthologies of this ilk should come with a warning label. All this aside, there's some good writing here. My personal favorite from this collection has to be "Majesty." ( )

I like Miranda July's style a lot. And I finally read the story that Ashley has been telling me about for years "Making Love in 2003" which is good. Something about the detached-ness of the characters though makes me feel detached and kind of hate them. Which might be what is wrong with my first book. Like, if the character is angry and alone, you kind of are like, "Well, bully for you, why don't you try a little harder." That's kind of how I feel about Miranda July. Except that I think she is smart and is trying to do something complex with those detached, lonely characters. It's just really hard to do. ( )

Miranda July reminds me of the rapper who does the best guest spots on other people's albums, but a whole album just gets a bit repetitive. I began the collection thoroughly laughing. But the more I read, the more I felt I was laughing at, rather than with the characters which led to my feeling uncomfortable about the whole situation. Maybe that's the point. Either way - -she's got talent, it just gets a bit overbearing. ( )

There were some laugh out loud moments, but I mostly didn't like it. I thought a lot of the sex was unnecessary and didn't serve the stories very well. And I think three of the stories used the same device where someone would wait in an exact location until the person that spurned them returned. It was strange. ( )

Amazingly heart-warming. ( )

This book was interesting. I can't say I loved it, but I definitely enjoyed the stories and would read more by her. One thing that bothered me, though, was that they're all told in first person, all about different people, and yet all have the same, very odd/quirky voice to them. Which...would work fine if that were her narrative voice and she were writing in third person. Less so when I'm supposed to believe that every one of these people is this peculiar in exactly the same way. ( )

Brilliantly beautiful scant but pure short stories. i'm a guy and still i enjoyed. ( )

http://bookchronicle.wordpress.com/20... ( )

Remarkably interesting author with a dynamic voice, she presents to the reader a theme of inherent loneliness and the actions that stem from such a nature. It is definitely a text that most can appreciate, although it can be awkward and somewhat absurd at points (intentionally). ( )

shockingly odd, pathetically lonely characters making real or imagined--but usually unexpected and novel--connections with other people. ( )

Miranda July's great strength is her ability to maintain child-like innocence even while discussing some of the most horrific emotional violence that people can visit onto one another. If that sounds like something you'll like, then this book is for you! ( )

When I first started exploring other book blogs and reading related e-newsletters, Miranda July’s collection of short stories kept popping up. The author and her collection of short stories sounded intriguing to me, but for whatever reason it wasn’t something I thought about when I went to order books. I joined Audible this spring and I was delighted to see that they offered this book and that it was read by the author. Since she’s a performance artist, I knew that this was the way to go with this book and used a credit on it immediately. In the end, I was happy that I picked this up during my introductory period and didn’t pay full price for the credit I spent on it.

No One Belongs Here More Than You is a collection of stories, in most cases not much more than character sketches, about people who are socially awkward and who just don’t seem to fit in with their surroundings. They are desperate and candidates for therapy at best and institutionalization at worst. There were moments where I really loved her writing, but I never once cared about a single narrator. If anything, I was concerned for the safety of those who were unwittingly apart of their lives.

After about the fifth story they all started to blend together and I lost interest. Miranda July’s reading didn’t help. While I cannot say that she read in a monotone voice, there is something about its quality and the lack of emotion that added to my disinterest. While listening, I often wonder if I would have enjoyed this more if it were read by another person or if I read it myself. It’s possible that those factors may have elevated my opinion somewhat, but I doubt it would have been enough for me to recommend it as a whole. Quite frankly, this territory is better covered by Patrick McGrath.

If you are interested (there is sample audio in the review posted on my blog), the stories “The Man on the Stairs” and “Birthmark” stood out to me. Rent the book from the library and read those stories. Otherwise, I’d just pass.

http://literatehousewife.wordpress.co... ( )

Very enjoyable short stories though they were tragic and wonderful in equal mixture. I enjoyed this more than her movie. ( )

some people don't like the book because they expect Miranda July to be "endearing", after watching her movie Me and You and Everyone We Know. To me that's a misinterpretation - the book is quirky, but it's more dark, sadly funny, or funnily sad, and the common element is the loneliness, vulnerability, and sense of unfulfillment that is the core of the human condition. ( )

Miranda July's funny, sad, startling collection of short stories won the Frank O'Connor in 2007. It comes with different coloured covers so that you can coordinate your copy with your clothes. I bought mine via Abebooks and got a bright green copy which clashed a bit with my wardrobe.

Often bordering on the bizarre, these 16 stories of lonely misfits, injured by life, aching for love and acceptance would really hurt to read, but the characters are survivors, buffered by their rich fantasy lives.

The protagonist of Shared Patio longs to write for a magazine advice column and the story is sprinkled with offbeat advice. She builds fantasies around her neighbour which she gets close to fulfilling when he has an epileptic fit on the shared patio one day.

In Swim Team a woman coaches a swimming team comprising old people in her apartment and without the aid of water (although she does provide them with bowls when they need to practice breathing exercises!)

A woman dreams of an erotic encounter with Prince William in Majesty and awake plots how she might meet him.

In The Sister A lonely man is set up on a date with a colleague's sister who never turns up, and turns out never to have existed. Perhaps it doesn't matter in the end.

It's hard to pick a favourite, but Something That Needs Nothing is a love story that broke my heart. This Person is about how we will always go on sabotaging ourselves is as perfect a short short story as they come, and you can read the whole thing here.

I wonder it everyone reading the book will find themselves reflected in this book. Do you feel as lonely, as out of sync with the world, as uncertain as July's characters?

It's frightening to admit, but I do sometimes. I really do! And if you say yes too, I think I will look at you oddly (as of course you will have to look at me). Maybe this is the great unsayable - we aren't as together as we'd like the world to think we are.

But when you look at Miranda July, who successful, young and beautiful, everything her characters are not, you wonder how the hell she channels these voices!

I feel like turning the book over and beginning it all over again. This is a collection that is staying on my writing desk to stir up my slothful own muse. ( )

At its best, July's writing is beautiful, with finely wrought characters and excruciatingly honest details. At its worst, the characters begin to sound like one another, and that one person is someone you wouldn't want sitting next to you on the subway or local bus. The stronger stories ("Something That Needs Nothing," "The Man on the Stairs," "Birthmark" and "How to Tell Stories to Children" among others) are brilliantly heartbreaking, and far outweigh the weaker ones. Overall, this collection is probably best read one story at a time, but the stories themselves make this hard to do-- they are fast-paced and leave you wanting more. ( )

Most of the stories in this collection feel a lot like her film project, Me and You and Everyone We Know. She is a literary “cute brute” who sometimes manages to create clever scenes that inject a slightly humorous innocence into otherwise dire circumstances. However, at other times it feels immature and gratuitous. Sometimes her unrelenting authorial smile should crumble. ( )

There’s a pathos about all the characters. Lives of quiet desperation and whatnot. Except that it lost all potency with me because I didn’t care about the actors in these stories. They didn’t seem real to me so why would I give a rip about them? Perhaps I should have appreciated their child-like nature, but I didn’t.

(Full review at my blog) ( )

Reading these stories is like listening to someone while constantly looking her in the face to see if she is serious. Is she pulling my leg? She looks normal. Like it’s totally no big deal to tell me about a father who explains his grown-up daughter how to make women come. And it doesn’t matter either that this grown-up daughter ponders whether the woman she will maybe do it to, in the future, will actually like it. Her dad will not be there to help her. Besides, ‘I suppose she would be a lesbian and not want him to touch her.’ Well, obviously. Naturally.

Oh, I know that she knows that I know this is quirky and odd and weird, that’s why she keeps the straight face. She’s so good at exaggerating how normal she thinks this is. And actually she doesn’t antagonize me: it’s adorable, this matter-of-fact-face and these outrageous stories.

And in a way she’s right. Beneath the odd, the weird and the quirky, these stories are actually ‘just’ about relationships. Sudden fits of intimacy, awkward silences, gradual withdrawals, secret wishes and unexpected brain waves that save the day.

It has been said that all her characters are losers, but this is not true. Some are great friend makers. Up to the point that they get a little impatient with the ‘recoiling’ type: ‘Some people need a red carpet rolled out in front of them in order to walk into a friendship.’

Anyway, you should read these stories. They’re really very good. ( )

Nice collection of stories. There were only 2 I didn't really get into. Probably not for everyone, but I dig her work. ( )

I would never mistake the writing in this book to be anyone's except Miranda July. I saw Me and You and Everyone We Know, so this book seemed to follow in the same style, only more depth and breadth. The writing style is like opening up my head and pouring the words onto my brain. By that, I mean there's no deciding what she means when she writes something. She's speaking directly to me. I felt uncomfortable during some of the stories. After I finished it, I think it's a good amound of discomfort, but in the middle of it, I wasn't sure. I was also traveling via plane, so I was uncomfortable anyway.I hope she writes more. I will read it all. ( )

http://occamsrazorlibrary.blogspot.co... ( )

Miranda July is a very accomplished young woman -- actress, filmmaker, zine-maker, indie goddess, DIY heroine, et cetera. I liked her movie Me And You And Everyone We Know, but now that I've read her book of stories No One Belongs Here More Than You I'm utterly floored.

If Lorrie Moore had grown up in a severely screwed-up family among the bohos of Portland, Oregon, she might have written these stories. July has Moore's knack of writing sentences that are hilarious upon first reading -- funny because they are true -- and poignant thereafter, sad because they are true. These tales of oddballs and misfits reaching awkwardly for meaning and solace are just stunning. They seem to drop out of a clear blue sky, oddly-shaped jewels that feel wrong in any other shape. Pardon my drool. Miranda July turns out to be my latest favorite writer.

July has said in at least one interview that writing fiction has taught her about narrative, the craft and value of it. Hooray! The weakness of Me And You And Everyone We Know was the lack of narrative drive and purpose. Some of the stories in this collection work quite well without plot, simply as mood pieces or scenes. The later tales (especially "How To Tell Stories To Children") combine July's gift for character with a newly assured control of story.

I hope July finishes her next movie quickly and gets back to the fiction-writing desk.