The First Bad Man: A Novel

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, January 2015: Cheryl Glickman is an employee at a self-defense nonprofit, an ironic profession once you get to know her. She lives alone, pickling in her eccentricities, and obsesses over a douchey co-worker with designs on much younger prey. If anyone needs the sense knocked into her, it is Cheryl, and lo and behold, an unwelcome and most unsanitary houseguest just might (literally) be up to the task. As Cheryl is taken outside of her comfort zone, you may be as well when reading Miranda July’s hilariously irreverent and oddly romantic novel, The First Bad Man. There are some outlandishly crude moments that belie what ends up being an achingly tender treatise on love and motherhood. It is a testament to July’s skill as a storyteller that she is able to make you laugh, cringe, and cry from one page to the next, and not only sympathize with a very unlikely heroine, but actually relate to her. Let your freak flags fly and enjoy. –Erin Kodicek