I decided to read this because it won the Pulitzer for fiction. Set in two very different places -- in pre-fall Saigon and contemporary America -- this novel is about a guy who “two faces” -- a man whose allegiance (to which country? to which friends? to which ideals?) is constantly in flux.

If one listens to an audio version of a novel, has one “read” it? I listened to this novel in two sittings and two jogging sessions. And with the author’s voice in my earbuds, it certainly feels to me like I experienced the fullness of this wacky, intense, gut-wrenching novel. What delighted and impressed me most about it was how successfully Miranda July revealed the protagonist’s interior world — much of which is entirely fabricated, unbeknownst to her. Another aspect of this novel that pleasantly surprised me was how often characters “turned/”shifted” from positive to negative, or negative to positive (and yes, I’ve been reading Robert McKee …)