story: “The Shared Patio”
author: Miranda July
year: 2007
where: Reed College at Writer Jim Shepard’s Close Reading Craft Talk. An amazing experience!
note: I bought July’s book, No One Belongs Here More Than You, years ago at the cozy Barnes and Nobles on 6th Avenue in New York. That outpost has since closed. I remember the cover was bright yellow with bold black writing on the cover. It felt like the most New York book I had ever seen. I was intimidated to read it. I felt it was either too sophisticated for me at that stage in my life–alternatively, I wondered if it was fluff. Now, I know it was the former.
a line: “It still counts, even though it happened when he was unconscious.”
theme(s): Unrequited love, self-help, delusions, loneliness
samantha Neugebauer 