No One Belongs Here More Than You. Stories by Miranda July

A woman teaches senior citizens how to swim. In her kitchen.
A special needs assistant has a secret relationship with her college advisor, who happens to be Madeleine L’Engle’s husband, and goes on to have her heart broken by a special needs student who is the embodiment of something she has known and longed for most of her life. A middle-aged woman dreams up ways to fulfill her secret longing to meet Prince William. Perhaps her lecture on earthquake preparedness will make him fall in love with her.
No One Belongs Here More Than You is the debut collection of short stories by Miranda July. Those familiar with her performance art and film work will instantly recognize her voice. In these wonderful and tender stories she makes the improbable all too probable and the absurd all too familiar. The stories overflow with a feeling of spontaneity and yet have the immediacy and thoughtful details of a well-thought-out plan (“I was patience defined, patience misspelled, patience sounded out slowly, letter by letter, with the t pronounced “shh.”). There is an innocence displayed in the repeated use of the “if X, then Y” cause and effect kind of child-like internal logic (“I lifted the curtain and saw him putting out the sprinkler. It was dusk. If he saw me, I would live. Look up, look up, look up. He raised his eyes, as if it were his own idea, and I waived.”). But it is not all smiles and sunshine. It is dark at times, but it is all familiar territory. There is a sadness in these stories. A loneliness. A longing to be loved. Feelings that are all too human. And all too real. George Saunders calls these stories July-esque, which is to say “infused with wonder at the things of the world”. I couldn’t have said it better myself.