It Chooses You - Hardcover

3.97

28,446 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0857862545 ISBN 13: 9780857862549

Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd, 2011

In the summer of 2009, Miranda July was struggling to finish writing the screenplay for her much-anticipated second film. During her increasingly long lunch breaks, she began to obsessively read the PennySaver, the iconic clas sifieds booklet that reached everywhere and seemed to come from nowhere. Who was the person selling the Large leather Jacket, $10? It seemed important to find out - or at least it was a great distraction from the screenplay. Accompanied by photographer Brigitte Sire, July crisscrossed Los Angeles to meet a random selection of PennySaver sellers, glimpsing thirteen surprisingly moving and profoundly specific realities, along the way shaping her film, and herself, in unexpected ways. Elegantly blending narrative, interviews, and photographs with July's off-kilter honesty and deadpan humor, this is a story of procrastination and inspiration, isolation and connection, and grabbing hold of the invisible world.

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About the Author:

Miranda July is a filmmaker, artist and writer. Her videos, performances, and web-based projects have been presented at sites such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and in two Whitney Biennials. July wrote, directed and starred in the film Me and You and Everyone We Knew (2005), which won a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the Camera d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Her fiction has appeared in the Paris Review, Harper's, and The New Yorker; her collection of stories No One Belongs Here More Than You (Canongate, 2007), won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. July created the participatory website learningtloveyoumore with artist Harrell Fletcher, and a companion book was published in 2007 (Prestel). Raised in Berkeley, California, she currently lives in Los Angeles. Her second feature film, The Future, was released in the summer of 2011.

Review:

Laden with offbeat, emotionally isolated characters...mordantly funny * * Vogue on No One Belongs Here More Than You * * Weird doesn't begin to cover it, but wonderful (in the literal sense of the word, as in full of wonder) does * * Elle on No One Belongs Here More Than You * * Incredibly charming, beautifully written, frequently laugh-out-loud funny, and even, a dozen or so times, profound -- Dave Eggers on No One Belongs Here More Than You Their stories are weird, touching and, in the case of Ron...unsettling. No less compelling than the characters themselves, though, is July's scrutiny of what she's doing. * * Observer * * The book is amusing...but more than that, it is weirdly heartbreaking. I was touched by the terrible sadness of foundering lives observed up close and sympathetically. * * Herald * * July's empathy and obsession with human connectivity bring real warmth. [It Chooses You] provides an intriguing insight into American society. * * Big Issue * * A moving portrait of 13 LA lives and the writer's own journey, which is made all the more awesome by her hilarious, deadpan writing style. * * Cooler Magazine * *

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