THE FIRST BAD MAN

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 peoples' babies. Cheryl is also obsessed with Phillip, a philandering board member at the women's self-defence nonprofit organisation where she works. She believes they've been making love for many lifetimes, though they have yet to consummate it in this one. When Cheryl's bosses ask if their twenty-one-year-old daughter, Clee, can move into her house for a 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, slyly hilarious, 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.