"It Chooses You" by Miranda July

This is Miranda...

and here is her book

One of the few benefits of having no choice but to lie around in bed all day, is that it limits your choices of things you CAN do. My choices right now include watching TV/movies, surfing the internet, blogging  or reading from the comfort of my pillow top mattress. I have decided to do more reading.

The first book on my nightstand this week was It Chooses You by Miranda July. Beckie gave me this book last Christmas and although I loved the title and the idea of reading it, it has been sitting on my nightstand gathering dust ever since. Until a couple days ago.

Before I tell you about this book I should tell you a little about Beckie and what she reads and why she thought that I would like this book. I've told you before that she is the writer in the family, but she is also a voracious reader. She reads EVERYTHING. It's not unusual for her to have 2 or 3 books going at a time - maybe more - it's hard to keep up with her! I'd like to think that we gave her this love of reading with all the time we spent at Borders picking out the perfect book and just reading to her. The truth is, she was probably just born to love reading. When she started choosing her own books in middle school and high school, we would share books with each other - "I really think you'll love this one, Mom" - "Try this one, Bec." Some of our favorites were novels - These Dreams by Barbara Chepaitis, and We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates. When she went off to college and I didn't have her urging me to finish a book so that we could talk about it, I kinda let the books accumulate on my nightstand. We tried to do a virtual book club, but it's not the same. A couple of the books she chose for the book club were a little too sophisticated and beyond me. Besides, I had fallen out of the habit of reading on a regular basis - getting caught up in work stuff or going to the movies or keeping a young Wild Thing entertained on the weekend. Poor excuses, I know.

But back to this book. I think Bec picked it for me because she liked it, it's a quick read written in an interesting format, it's autobiographical and the author is a quirky mess. Bec and I share a love of stories in which the main character is indeed damaged, quirky and misunderstood. Miranda July seems a bit of all of these. She's all over the place. Her bio says that she is "a filmmaker, artist and writer." I think some of her issues have to do with the fact that she tries to do and be all these things at once. I can relate to that. She also has a problem with procrastination - something I have had issues with myself - so, more relatability.

This book is about what happened while Miranda procrastinated completing a screenplay. She had the beginning and ending of the screenplay sketched out but was having trouble with the middle...so she procrastinated. One of the things she did to procrastinate was to read through the PennySaver and imagine why people were trying to sell the things listed. On a whim, she began calling the sellers and asking to interview them. When she found a willing participant, she would show up with a photographer and an assistant, ask to see the item(s) being sold, then ask the person about his/her life. Although I believe she started the project as a way to avoid facing her writer's block with the screenplay, it seemed to become a real quest to answer questions in her own life. Her own mortality is something on her mind quite a bit. Here is a short passage about a few thoughts on time, marriage, children and death...

     So all my time was spent measuring time. While I listened to strangers and tried to patiently have faith in the unknown, I was also wondering how long this would take, and if any of it really mattered compared to having a baby. Word on the street was that it did not. Nothing mattered compared to having a baby.
     And now that I had vowed to hang out with this man until I died, I also thought a lot about dying. It seemed I had not only married him, I had also married my eventual death. Before the vows, I might have lived alone, but forever; now I would definitely not be alone and I would definitely die. I had agreed to die, in front of all my family and friends.

A quirky mess. But I understand her. Some of the interviews she did were sad, some touching and some uncomfortable. One of the men she interviewed ended up being in the movie of the screenplay that she did eventually finish.  The movie was released in 2011 and is titled The Future. She also stars in the movie so I do hope to be able to find this little Indie film.

It took me a long time to get to my bottom line on this book, didn't it? Well, of course, I liked it. It's unlike anything I've read in a while - funny at times yet sad in others. I told Beckie that I would love to meet Miranda as if she were an acquaintance of hers. This book is available at Amazon.com but I would be happy loan it to you if you want to read it. I do want it back, though. It was a gift, after all. And besides, I want to read it again after I see The Future.

 Good choice, Bec! Thanks for my Christmas present! I'm really sorry that it took me so long to enjoy it.