Author and artist Miranda July’s new book came out this fall. The First Bad Man is July’s first novel (She has previously published a short story collection, a screenplay, and a book based on an art project about love).
The novel “tells the story of Cheryl, a vulnerable, uptight woman in her early forties who lives alone, with a perpetual lump in her throat, unable to cry.” In an interview with The Believer, July revealed that the similarities she shares with the book’s main character. Check it out:
Well, it’s funny: when my husband read this book—which he only just did fairly recently, after it was done—he was like, “Oh, well, this is just you, this total insanity.” Not the whole character of Cheryl, but the part about cleaning the house, thinking of yourself as your own servant so that you’re not cleaning the house. I appear to be really into cleaning, but actually I hate it so much that I have to disassociate—it can’t really be me doing it.
An online store selling objects from the new book launched last December.