The First Bad Man

Miranda July

ISBN 10: 1439172560 / ISBN 13: 9781439172568

Published by Scribner Book Company, 2015

About this Item

The instant New York Times bestseller is astonishing.In one novel, Miranda July tells us more about our universal need to be loved, and our ability to love and be loved, than most earthbound authors will in a lifetime (Vanity Fair). In The First Bad Man, Miranda July 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. Cheryl is haunted by a baby boy she met when she was six; she also believes she has a profound connection with Phillip, a philandering board member at Open Palm, the women's self-defense studio where she has worked for twenty years. 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 teaches Cheryl what it means to love and be loved and, inadvertently, provides the solace of a lifetime. Brilliant, hilarious, irreverent, piercing--The First Bad Man powers past sexual boundaries and gender identification into the surprising galaxy of primal connection (O, The Oprah Magazine). This is a spectacularly original, unsettling, accomplished, and moving first novel with a tender and beguiling happy ending.

Seller Inventory # 00103265497

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The First Bad Man
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Publication Date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1439172560
• ISBN 13: 9781439172568
• Binding: Hardback
• Condition: Fair

About this title

Synopsis

New York Times Bestseller

The “brilliant, hilarious, irreverent, piercing” (O, The Oprah Magazine) debut novel from Miranda July, acclaimed filmmaker, artist, and author of All Fours.

Cheryl Glickman believes in romances that span centuries and a soul that migrates between babies. She works at a women’s self-defense nonprofit and lives alone. When her bosses ask if their twenty-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, leads her to the love of a lifetime.

Tender, gripping, slyly hilarious, infused with raging sexual fantasies 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.

About the Author

Miranda July is a writer, filmmaker, and artist. Her debut novel, The First Bad Man, was an instant New York Times bestseller, and her collection of stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You, won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and has been published in twenty-three countries. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Harper’s, and The New Yorker, and she is also the author of the novel All Fours, a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction. In 2025 she was named one of the 100 most influential people by Time and received a Guggenheim Fellowship. July lives in Los Angeles.