PositiveSlateIn The First Bad Man, July shows us a planet on which in no two grown humans live the same experience; they’re all wandering around in astronaut helmets full of swirling private language, and the best anyone can hope for is that their head bubble will form a kind of Venn diagram with someone else’s head bubble, if only for a little while. Everything is S&M: the fear of self-expression is so acute that adults ask one another for permission before they act, signing contracts to police their interpersonal interactions, and transferring their desires into what Cheryl’s therapist Ruth-Anne calls \'an immensely satisfying adult game\' ... Though this is her first novel, July is an accomplished writer of short fiction, and within The First Bad Man live a handful of perfectly drawn short stories ... Within the context of July’s work, The First Bad Man feels, if not exactly regressive, than not quite a giant leap forward. And yet within the context of the wider world—in which all speech is policed, but especially women’s stories about their uniquely feminine personal experiences—The First Bad Man feels visionary ... few have Miranda July’s almost clinical facility with dissecting these types of processes, or her particular talent for couching what feel like naked, universal truths in clouds of the imagined and the impossible.