“No One Belongs Here More Than You” is a collection of short stories by the multi-talented Miranda July.   Written from perspectives of varying experiences, genders and sexual preferences, these stories are a haunting and enchanting journey through the psyche of loneliness and intense desire.

While the book would most likely appeal to a female audience, it is nonetheless a remarkable study on the universal aspects of the human condition.   Most of the stories are written in first person and from predominantly female and often homosexual perspectives.

Primarily character driven, these short narratives go on deep journeys through the emotional and psychological universe of a single person, while the physical plot is often as simple as a walk down the street.

For example, in “The Man on the Stairs,” a woman lying in bed goes through a deep internal journey simply by pondering over the sound of someone climbing the stairwell outside her door.

Preferring to focus on the uncelebrated and unnoticed people of our everyday lives, July’s stories are about invisible people, invisible places and the small and understated moments of grace they manage to achieve in their own seemingly mundane lives.

Two-dimensional adventure stories such as “The Da Vinci Code” can easily excite readers with their easy conclusions and fast-paced actions scenes.

July, on the other hand, goes far beyond cheap thrills.   Her stories move on a visceral and emotional level and her characters, however insignificant, are all the more important to us because their everyday experiences are the same as ours.

As much as these stories uncover the beautiful and passionate elements of even the most pathetic and solitary human beings, they also venture quite daringly to explore the dark underbelly of desire.

Often, there are vast distances between these characters and the outside world, and in their alienation, their minds blossom with sexual longing for others far older or younger than themselves, peoples they do not know or shadowy entities.   The sexual aspects of the stories are gritty, intense and contradictory.

July’s stories will at once feel like a sensual dream and a punch in the stomach.   They are the accounts of deeply passionate and sexual characters navigating internal mazes of false fantasy, self disgust and reticent desire.