January 8 - "This Person"

“This Person”
by Miranda July
No One Belongs Here More Than You (2007)

* * * * (Great) Realistic

This person is having a great day. This person has found that everyone she knows has gathered together to show this person his or her love. Enjoying the attention and love, this person decides to check her post office box for mail – this person wants her mail - and that’s where this person comes to a realization.

This is the type of quirkily sweet – yet slightly sad – story I expect to find in a collection by July. This is the type of “cute” story that can only last so long before becoming tired or obnoxious. The idea of making this story so generic, and yet so true, is what allows it to be so clever. Written from an omniscient point of view, and rambling like our collective minds do, it doesn’t take more than a paragraph or two before you find yourself becoming, “this person.” If you don’t know the people this person meets at her picnic, you know someone similar, someone else who would fit right in with the rest of them. They are the people that populate our lives. They are the source of our happiness, of our depression. We all are this person.