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All Fours
The New York Times–bestselling author of The First Bad Man returns with an irreverently sexy, tender, hilarious, and surprising novel about a woman upending her life
A semifamous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to New York. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.
Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.
A semifamous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to New York. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.
Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published May 14, 2024
About the author
Miranda July
36 books4,378 followersMiranda July (born February 15, 1974) is a performance artist, musician, writer, actress and film director. She currently resides in Los Angeles, California, after having lived for many years in Portland, Oregon. Born Miranda Jennifer Grossinger, she works under the surname of "July," which can be traced to a character from a "girlzine" Miranda created with a high school friend called "Snarla."
Miranda July was born in Barre, Vermont, the daughter of Lindy Hough and Richard Grossinger. Her parents, who taught at Goddard College at the time, are both writers. In 1974 they founded North Atlantic Books, a publisher of alternative health, martial arts, and spiritual titles. Miranda was encouraged to work on her short fiction by author and friend of a friend, Rick Moody.
Miranda grew up in Berkeley, California, where she first began writing plays and staging them at the all-ages club 924 Gilman. She later attended UC Santa Cruz, dropping out in her sophomore year. After leaving college, she moved to Portland, Oregon and took up performance art. Her performances were successful; she has been quoted as saying she has not worked a day job since she was 23 years old.
Filmmaking
Filmmaker Magazine rated her number one in their "25 New Faces of Indie Film" in 2004. After winning a slot in a Sundance workshop, she developed her first feature-length film, Me and You and Everyone We Know, which opened in 2005. The film won The Caméra d'Or prize in The Cannes Festival 2005.
Beginning in 1996, while residing in Portland, July began a project called Joanie4Jackie (originally called "Big Miss Moviola") which solicited short films by women, which she compiled onto video cassettes, using the theme of a chain letter. She then sent the cassette to the participants, and to subscribers to the series, and offered them for sale to others interested. In addition to the chain letter series, July began a second series called the Co-Star Series, in which she invited friends from larger cities to select a group of films outside of the chain letter submissions. The curators included Miranda July, Rita Gonzalez, and Astria Suparak. The Joanie4Jackie series also screened at film festivals and DIY movie events. So far, thirteen editions have been released, the latest in 2002.
At her speaking engagement at the Modern Times Bookstore in San Francisco's Mission District on May 16, 2007, July mentioned that she is currently working on a new film.
Music
She recorded her first EP for Kill Rock Stars in 1996, entitled Margie Ruskie Stops Time, with music by The Need. After that, she released two more full-length LPs, 10 Million Hours A Mile in 1997 and Binet-Simon Test in 1998, both released on Kill Rock Stars. In 1999 she made a split EP with IQU, released on K Records.
Screen Writer
Miranda co-wrote the Wayne Wang feaure length film "The Center of the World."
Multimedia
In 1998, July made her first full-length multimedia performance piece, Love Diamond, in collaboration with composer Zac Love and with help from artist Jamie Isenstein; she called it a "live movie." She performed it at venues around the country, including the New York Video Festival, The Kitchen, and Yo-yo a Go-go in Olympia. She created her next major full-length performance piece, The Swan Tool, in 2000, also in collaboration with Love, with digital production work by Mitsu Hadeishi. She performed this piece in venues around the world, including the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
In 2006, after completing her first feature film, she went on to create another multimedia piece, Things We Don’t Understand and Definitely are Not Going To Talk About, which she performed in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York.
Her short story The Boy from Lam Kien was published in 2005 by Cloverfield Press, as a special-edition book.
Miranda July was born in Barre, Vermont, the daughter of Lindy Hough and Richard Grossinger. Her parents, who taught at Goddard College at the time, are both writers. In 1974 they founded North Atlantic Books, a publisher of alternative health, martial arts, and spiritual titles. Miranda was encouraged to work on her short fiction by author and friend of a friend, Rick Moody.
Miranda grew up in Berkeley, California, where she first began writing plays and staging them at the all-ages club 924 Gilman. She later attended UC Santa Cruz, dropping out in her sophomore year. After leaving college, she moved to Portland, Oregon and took up performance art. Her performances were successful; she has been quoted as saying she has not worked a day job since she was 23 years old.
Filmmaking
Filmmaker Magazine rated her number one in their "25 New Faces of Indie Film" in 2004. After winning a slot in a Sundance workshop, she developed her first feature-length film, Me and You and Everyone We Know, which opened in 2005. The film won The Caméra d'Or prize in The Cannes Festival 2005.
Beginning in 1996, while residing in Portland, July began a project called Joanie4Jackie (originally called "Big Miss Moviola") which solicited short films by women, which she compiled onto video cassettes, using the theme of a chain letter. She then sent the cassette to the participants, and to subscribers to the series, and offered them for sale to others interested. In addition to the chain letter series, July began a second series called the Co-Star Series, in which she invited friends from larger cities to select a group of films outside of the chain letter submissions. The curators included Miranda July, Rita Gonzalez, and Astria Suparak. The Joanie4Jackie series also screened at film festivals and DIY movie events. So far, thirteen editions have been released, the latest in 2002.
At her speaking engagement at the Modern Times Bookstore in San Francisco's Mission District on May 16, 2007, July mentioned that she is currently working on a new film.
Music
She recorded her first EP for Kill Rock Stars in 1996, entitled Margie Ruskie Stops Time, with music by The Need. After that, she released two more full-length LPs, 10 Million Hours A Mile in 1997 and Binet-Simon Test in 1998, both released on Kill Rock Stars. In 1999 she made a split EP with IQU, released on K Records.
Screen Writer
Miranda co-wrote the Wayne Wang feaure length film "The Center of the World."
Multimedia
In 1998, July made her first full-length multimedia performance piece, Love Diamond, in collaboration with composer Zac Love and with help from artist Jamie Isenstein; she called it a "live movie." She performed it at venues around the country, including the New York Video Festival, The Kitchen, and Yo-yo a Go-go in Olympia. She created her next major full-length performance piece, The Swan Tool, in 2000, also in collaboration with Love, with digital production work by Mitsu Hadeishi. She performed this piece in venues around the world, including the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
In 2006, after completing her first feature film, she went on to create another multimedia piece, Things We Don’t Understand and Definitely are Not Going To Talk About, which she performed in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York.
Her short story The Boy from Lam Kien was published in 2005 by Cloverfield Press, as a special-edition book.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 4,067 reviews
August 14, 2024
weird books are sooooooo back i loved this
genuinely funny with so many one-liner zingers, but also really interesting commentary on parenting, monogamy, the institution of marriage, pooled wisdom, menopause, and sexuality
miranda july is the master
genuinely funny with so many one-liner zingers, but also really interesting commentary on parenting, monogamy, the institution of marriage, pooled wisdom, menopause, and sexuality
miranda july is the master
June 16, 2024
I think this is my favorite thing she has made. Her work always makes me feel like I’m allowed to exist.
January 22, 2024
for some reason i really identify with books about artsy white women in their 40s experiencing a dramatic rebirth in their romantic and domestic lives (i am a 27yo chinese american)
but whatever, this book rocked me upside down and spit me back out with the fucking force that only good, honest writing can!! it was funny, it was sad, it was horny (very horny). it could only have come from a place of very deep trueness.
for fans of sheila heti, chris kraus, sex as a way of understanding, posting on instagram for just one person to see, falling in love with traits you once found cringey
“I’d whipped myself into a froth of longing — or worked, created fictions.... Was there any actual enchantment or was it all just survival, ways to muddle through?”
but whatever, this book rocked me upside down and spit me back out with the fucking force that only good, honest writing can!! it was funny, it was sad, it was horny (very horny). it could only have come from a place of very deep trueness.
for fans of sheila heti, chris kraus, sex as a way of understanding, posting on instagram for just one person to see, falling in love with traits you once found cringey
“I’d whipped myself into a froth of longing — or worked, created fictions.... Was there any actual enchantment or was it all just survival, ways to muddle through?”
September 4, 2023
I can’t stop thinking about this book. Nearly every woman/femme over 40 that I know is in what feels like a subterranean death-struggle with themselves, meditating on monogamy and meaning, bodily autonomy and dashed expectations, looking at the second half of life with both a fierce yearning and a sense of certain despair. July gives voice and shape to this outsizing struggle and offers a kind of hope (in art, in sex and desire, inside our bodies!) without taking her unflinching gaze off the reality of loss, without succumbing to the false hope of answers.
The novel also invites us into the secret plush pink motel room of Erotics for the No-Longer-Young, to get weird and real inside it, to learn about all its delusion and ridiculousness, all its sacred and humble and profane, creating a different way to look at desire, hidden inside the old, ugly, boring claptrap ways.
Oh and it’s the only book that’s ever made me cry because of dog shit, and it’s hot and funny, too.
The novel also invites us into the secret plush pink motel room of Erotics for the No-Longer-Young, to get weird and real inside it, to learn about all its delusion and ridiculousness, all its sacred and humble and profane, creating a different way to look at desire, hidden inside the old, ugly, boring claptrap ways.
Oh and it’s the only book that’s ever made me cry because of dog shit, and it’s hot and funny, too.
Want to read
May 30, 2024my favorite genre is women going insane
April 9, 2024
Unpopular opinion alert…
Ugh. All Fours by Miranda July is a book that I should have DNFed, but kept going because of my own stupidity and curiosity. This book made me feel icky. Like, super duper uncomfortable and nauseous. It’s extremely sexual, graphic, raunchy, and disturbing. There really should be a content warning on the cover, or at least in the synopsis! For the most part, I’d consider myself pretty open-minded and not particularly prudish, but the descriptions in this novel were WAY too much for me.
I requested this novel because the protagonist was in her mid-forties, and I thought that I’d be able to relate to her. Unfortunately, this was not the case at all. I truly could NOT stand the main character. This book tested me. I tried SO hard not to be judgmental towards this woman, but found it impossible. She put herself in the most unbelievably awkward situations, and made some absolutely foolish decisions. She’s going through some kind of mid-life sexual crisis or weird sexual awakening, and I wanted no part of it. The gag-worthy moments were endless, and I almost lost my lunch.
Sure, there was some great insight on aging, menopause, motherhood, and marriage, but the cringey scenes just ruined the entire reading experience for me. The author narrates the audiobook herself, which I appreciated. She has a wonderful speaking voice and is pretty funny, so I’ll give it some points for that at least. Overall, this one was a major disappointment for me. My hopes were very high, but sadly, I was left shuddering, and desperately trying to shake off the heebie-jeebies. There’s no doubt that this will be a “love it or hate it” type book. There’s a TON of raving five star reviews out there. I obviously fell in the latter. Eww, ick, gross. Not for me. All Fours is out on May 14th, and I give it 2/5 stars. Do NOT recommend.
Ugh. All Fours by Miranda July is a book that I should have DNFed, but kept going because of my own stupidity and curiosity. This book made me feel icky. Like, super duper uncomfortable and nauseous. It’s extremely sexual, graphic, raunchy, and disturbing. There really should be a content warning on the cover, or at least in the synopsis! For the most part, I’d consider myself pretty open-minded and not particularly prudish, but the descriptions in this novel were WAY too much for me.
I requested this novel because the protagonist was in her mid-forties, and I thought that I’d be able to relate to her. Unfortunately, this was not the case at all. I truly could NOT stand the main character. This book tested me. I tried SO hard not to be judgmental towards this woman, but found it impossible. She put herself in the most unbelievably awkward situations, and made some absolutely foolish decisions. She’s going through some kind of mid-life sexual crisis or weird sexual awakening, and I wanted no part of it. The gag-worthy moments were endless, and I almost lost my lunch.
Sure, there was some great insight on aging, menopause, motherhood, and marriage, but the cringey scenes just ruined the entire reading experience for me. The author narrates the audiobook herself, which I appreciated. She has a wonderful speaking voice and is pretty funny, so I’ll give it some points for that at least. Overall, this one was a major disappointment for me. My hopes were very high, but sadly, I was left shuddering, and desperately trying to shake off the heebie-jeebies. There’s no doubt that this will be a “love it or hate it” type book. There’s a TON of raving five star reviews out there. I obviously fell in the latter. Eww, ick, gross. Not for me. All Fours is out on May 14th, and I give it 2/5 stars. Do NOT recommend.
May 29, 2024
The writing is incredible and also I hated this book.
May 15, 2024
The multitalented artist Miranda July has written a wildly sexual book about a woman approaching menopause, so of course it’s time for a square old man to pass judgment.
At your service.
But first, is it getting hot in here?
I’ve never reviewed such an explicit novel before. I felt so self-conscious reading “All Fours” on the subway that I tore off the cover. July, 50, seems determined to cure the inhibitions of middle age by stripping away every censorial impulse and plunging us into a bubble bath of erotic candor.
Although such a description may invoke the spirit of Anaïs Nin, July is too funny for that association. In these pages, she’s outrageous and outrageously hilarious. With “All Fours,” perimenopausal readers finally have their own “Portnoy’s Complaint.” But even that comparison doesn’t capture the immediacy of July’s prose, its infallible timing, its palpable sense of performance. Indeed, several unforgettable (and unquotable) sections have the snap and swoop of a transgressive stand-up routine.
The unnamed narrator — “a woman who had success in several mediums” — is a close approximation of July, who’s published books; directed, written and acted on stage and in films; and currently has a solo art show in Milan. Although “All Fours” is labeled a novel, the space between the author’s life and the story’s protagonist is often no wider than a bra strap.
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://wapo.st/4bHhYiT
At your service.
But first, is it getting hot in here?
I’ve never reviewed such an explicit novel before. I felt so self-conscious reading “All Fours” on the subway that I tore off the cover. July, 50, seems determined to cure the inhibitions of middle age by stripping away every censorial impulse and plunging us into a bubble bath of erotic candor.
Although such a description may invoke the spirit of Anaïs Nin, July is too funny for that association. In these pages, she’s outrageous and outrageously hilarious. With “All Fours,” perimenopausal readers finally have their own “Portnoy’s Complaint.” But even that comparison doesn’t capture the immediacy of July’s prose, its infallible timing, its palpable sense of performance. Indeed, several unforgettable (and unquotable) sections have the snap and swoop of a transgressive stand-up routine.
The unnamed narrator — “a woman who had success in several mediums” — is a close approximation of July, who’s published books; directed, written and acted on stage and in films; and currently has a solo art show in Milan. Although “All Fours” is labeled a novel, the space between the author’s life and the story’s protagonist is often no wider than a bra strap.
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://wapo.st/4bHhYiT
June 13, 2024
DNF and I don't have a profound reason why I lost interest. It isn't cohering for me--it reads like a diatribe from a very intense, overwrought narrator. It's difficult for me to maintain interest (without becoming exhausted) with a first person narrator that is this frenzied, extreme and emotionally ravaged. It's almost like listening to someone coked up for hours at a time. THEY think they are interesting, but in fact I just get weary. Perhaps I will return to it later? But when 12 days go by and I am only on page 101, I think it is time to move on, for now.
Also, the sex scenes aren't sexy, they make me never want to have sex again!
Miranda July is a creative, imaginative, and talented woman. She is an author, a performance artist, actor, filmmaker, musician, and she also does artistic installations. I respect her talent and her energy, but this book was too over the top for me. I tried going back to it, but all this vibrating energy drained me.
Also, the sex scenes aren't sexy, they make me never want to have sex again!
Miranda July is a creative, imaginative, and talented woman. She is an author, a performance artist, actor, filmmaker, musician, and she also does artistic installations. I respect her talent and her energy, but this book was too over the top for me. I tried going back to it, but all this vibrating energy drained me.
March 24, 2024
lost me at the tampon foreplay and dog shit clean up
July 13, 2024
Omg – yes! Clearly, I need Miranda July in my life more than once a year. She makes me laugh and… well, maybe not cry, but think! And cringe. Definitely cringe at times. She shies away from absolutely nothing! Sometimes I find this annoying, this no holds barred approach to writing. Just as in real life, a person that refuses to hold back a single damn thing can get on my nerves. It feels too forced. But with July, there’s a purpose. She’s not going to show you part of her character. You are going to see the genuine person - the good, the bad and the ugly (and it does get “ugly” here at times!). She is refreshingly honest, and I’d say that’s the appeal to me as a reader.
“The only dangerous lie was one that asked me to compress myself down into a single convenient entity that one person could understand. I was a kaleidoscope, each glittering piece of glass changing as I turned.”
When the narrator, a forty-five-year-old artist, embarks on a cross-country drive, she ends up not at the end of her intended excursion to New York City, but at a dumpy motel only thirty minutes away from home. And there begins an entirely different sort of journey of a mid-life wife and mother of a young son. Don’t expect the same old story of a conforming, middle-aged woman breaking free, however. The narrator is anything but your typical housewife to begin with, so this ride gets wild and bumpy and raunchy! And poignant and meaningful. Do not lose focus or you will miss out entirely on the significance, the essence of the whole thing.
“If I lived to be ninety I was halfway through. Or if you thought of it as two lives, then I was at the very start of my second life. I imagined a vision quest-style journey involving a cave, a cliff, a crystal, maybe a labyrinth and a golden ring.”
“Everyone thinks they’re so securely bound into their lives. Really I had done almost nothing to end up here. I had walked the wrong way around the block and then gone the wrong direction on the freeway.”
What I loved most about this was that the narrator really had no clue, no plan as to what she was going to do next. She was entirely spontaneous, figuring out herself and her desires and her needs as she went along. Ideas shifted, circumstances changed, and she wound up in a variety of situations as she evolved into this new person. Well, “new” person isn’t really the right word. She figured out what she wanted next out of life, given the person she had been all along really. Have you ever made a list or a plan and then botched it up completely? Of course you have! Went off the rails and done something else entirely different? Or maybe not off the rails, but had to regroup and change direction a bit? The narrator is so damn funny – so relatable at times that I had to laugh and nod my head.
“I spent the rest of the afternoon planning the rest of my life. I made lists of the different areas and how I could throw myself into them. They included Family and Marriage and Work but also Service. I had not been of enough service in my life. I could see getting deeply involved in all sorts of helping… Also the rest of my life would be a slog and then I would die. Which is the case for many people. It’s no big deal.”
This woman isn’t really about to give in though. She has grit and determination and the admiration of this reader! Even if you can’t fully relate to her actions, someone going through a time of life transitions should surely be able to empathize with her feelings. Perhaps her sexual adventures aren’t to your liking, but if you try to look beyond that at the bigger picture, then you will gulp this novel down in one big, appetizing bite too! Make sure to read the Acknowledgements section if you make it through to the end. July conducted a series of interviews with women in midlife and garnered a range of physical and emotional changes that went along with it. Oh, and several doctors as well. Bonus points for doing the extra legwork! She’s truly brilliant. I might have loved this even more than The First Bad Man, and that's saying a lot!
“Maybe it all began now, my life as a wife comfortable in her own home, a real wife. I tried to remember how Pinocchio had become a real boy. It had something to do with being in a whale, maybe saving his father’s life; I hadn’t done anything like that. But surely a woman was more complex than a puppet boy and she might become herself not once-and-for-all but cyclically: waxing, waning, sometimes disappearing altogether.”
“The only dangerous lie was one that asked me to compress myself down into a single convenient entity that one person could understand. I was a kaleidoscope, each glittering piece of glass changing as I turned.”
When the narrator, a forty-five-year-old artist, embarks on a cross-country drive, she ends up not at the end of her intended excursion to New York City, but at a dumpy motel only thirty minutes away from home. And there begins an entirely different sort of journey of a mid-life wife and mother of a young son. Don’t expect the same old story of a conforming, middle-aged woman breaking free, however. The narrator is anything but your typical housewife to begin with, so this ride gets wild and bumpy and raunchy! And poignant and meaningful. Do not lose focus or you will miss out entirely on the significance, the essence of the whole thing.
“If I lived to be ninety I was halfway through. Or if you thought of it as two lives, then I was at the very start of my second life. I imagined a vision quest-style journey involving a cave, a cliff, a crystal, maybe a labyrinth and a golden ring.”
“Everyone thinks they’re so securely bound into their lives. Really I had done almost nothing to end up here. I had walked the wrong way around the block and then gone the wrong direction on the freeway.”
What I loved most about this was that the narrator really had no clue, no plan as to what she was going to do next. She was entirely spontaneous, figuring out herself and her desires and her needs as she went along. Ideas shifted, circumstances changed, and she wound up in a variety of situations as she evolved into this new person. Well, “new” person isn’t really the right word. She figured out what she wanted next out of life, given the person she had been all along really. Have you ever made a list or a plan and then botched it up completely? Of course you have! Went off the rails and done something else entirely different? Or maybe not off the rails, but had to regroup and change direction a bit? The narrator is so damn funny – so relatable at times that I had to laugh and nod my head.
“I spent the rest of the afternoon planning the rest of my life. I made lists of the different areas and how I could throw myself into them. They included Family and Marriage and Work but also Service. I had not been of enough service in my life. I could see getting deeply involved in all sorts of helping… Also the rest of my life would be a slog and then I would die. Which is the case for many people. It’s no big deal.”
This woman isn’t really about to give in though. She has grit and determination and the admiration of this reader! Even if you can’t fully relate to her actions, someone going through a time of life transitions should surely be able to empathize with her feelings. Perhaps her sexual adventures aren’t to your liking, but if you try to look beyond that at the bigger picture, then you will gulp this novel down in one big, appetizing bite too! Make sure to read the Acknowledgements section if you make it through to the end. July conducted a series of interviews with women in midlife and garnered a range of physical and emotional changes that went along with it. Oh, and several doctors as well. Bonus points for doing the extra legwork! She’s truly brilliant. I might have loved this even more than The First Bad Man, and that's saying a lot!
“Maybe it all began now, my life as a wife comfortable in her own home, a real wife. I tried to remember how Pinocchio had become a real boy. It had something to do with being in a whale, maybe saving his father’s life; I hadn’t done anything like that. But surely a woman was more complex than a puppet boy and she might become herself not once-and-for-all but cyclically: waxing, waning, sometimes disappearing altogether.”
June 28, 2024
This was bizarre, in the way you expect Miranda July to be bizarre. It's her trademark. And it was funny, in the way you expect her to be funny. Toss in some poignancy, too.
But it was also 336 pages. God, that's a lot of Miranda July. I kept thinking, oh, it would be so perfect if it ended here, at the end of her fake trip. No? Okay, here, when something major happens at home. No? Okay, here, just here, or even here please, for the love of god, because even though she's bizarre and funny and poignant, I'm exhausted by this peri-menopausal Odyssey she's taken me on. Exhausted by her emotional and erotic journey. I feel like I've been through something, reading this, and I need a deep and long recovery from it.
I also need to stop thinking about the tampon scene, or the one with the elderly woman who sold her the quilt. And all the endless masturbation. Dear god, Miranda July. Really? Yes, she says, in her flat, breathy voice, really. If you don't want to read stuff like that, then you shouldn't have picked this up. That's what you sign up for when you see my name on the cover. So don't complain.
Okay. I won't complain, then.
There were things about this book I loved - I loved that she took a road trip, and then quickly gave up and stayed in a motel and pretended to her husband that she was still driving across the country. That she paid to redecorate her shitty motel room. It was funny, it was bizarre, and - well, her loneliness and secretiveness and trapped-ness was poignant. Her deep need to be free, and completely herself - something you might think should be simple, a given, even, turns out to be something that challenges the structures of society, family and relationship. So that was poignant too.
I just think it could have been more powerful if she took us on a 10km run, rather than a full, freaking marathon.
It's hard to be knocked down when you're on all fours.
But it was also 336 pages. God, that's a lot of Miranda July. I kept thinking, oh, it would be so perfect if it ended here, at the end of her fake trip. No? Okay, here, when something major happens at home. No? Okay, here, just here, or even here please, for the love of god, because even though she's bizarre and funny and poignant, I'm exhausted by this peri-menopausal Odyssey she's taken me on. Exhausted by her emotional and erotic journey. I feel like I've been through something, reading this, and I need a deep and long recovery from it.
I also need to stop thinking about the tampon scene, or the one with the elderly woman who sold her the quilt. And all the endless masturbation. Dear god, Miranda July. Really? Yes, she says, in her flat, breathy voice, really. If you don't want to read stuff like that, then you shouldn't have picked this up. That's what you sign up for when you see my name on the cover. So don't complain.
Okay. I won't complain, then.
There were things about this book I loved - I loved that she took a road trip, and then quickly gave up and stayed in a motel and pretended to her husband that she was still driving across the country. That she paid to redecorate her shitty motel room. It was funny, it was bizarre, and - well, her loneliness and secretiveness and trapped-ness was poignant. Her deep need to be free, and completely herself - something you might think should be simple, a given, even, turns out to be something that challenges the structures of society, family and relationship. So that was poignant too.
I just think it could have been more powerful if she took us on a 10km run, rather than a full, freaking marathon.
It's hard to be knocked down when you're on all fours.
March 2, 2024
Read it all in one delirious day. Extraordinary. Honest. Vulnerable. Funny. Weird. Epic. Thank you for writing this, Miranda July. Your work only gets better as you age.
May 27, 2024
I didn’t really like her stuff when I was in my 20s but I felt I had to pretend to like it because Brooklyn. Now that I’m in my 40s, I can just admit- I am not this woman’s ideal reader. And that’s my perimenopausal sexual revolution.
June 12, 2024
Sigh. Some books make me feel positively ancient. Not many. But this is one of them.
Imagine being so evolved that you give birth a baby boy and immediately begin referring to him with the pronouns they/their. Not because he’s transgender; in fact, there’s every chance that he’s cisgender. But because you are so cleverly post-gender and so very modern. And imagine if marriage, to you, is nothing more than a script, divorce reinforces the supremacy of marriage, and life, in effect, ends for women in their 40s when they become perimenopausal. One more thing. Imagine if pulling out a bloody tampon is an act of eroticism.
If you agree with all of this, you are the audience for this book. I’m obviously not. There is some great writing and plot development here. Our narrator, Claire, goes on a solitary driving trip and ends up in shabby motel just miles from home. She’s got some money to burn, so she redecorates her motel room to the tune of $20k. Her decorator is the wife of a much-younger man she meets at a gas station. She wants to fuck him.So far so good. I can dig that fantasy.
Then she has an emotionally intense affair with said man, in that room. Now we’re in Erica Jong Fear of Flying territory. She eventually realizes that some of this is because of her fading libido. (Some of the best writing is in her recognition of what menopause wrecks on the female body. It’s akin to a nine-year-old looking at the skeleton of a dinosaur and realizing for the first time that she is also going to die someday).
All Four has its possibilities. It’s quirky and audacious and has sparks of insight into the female (dare I say that?) condition and the role of fantasy. But at times, I feel that it tries so hard to be postmodern, relevant, nihilistic, and cool. I guess I’m that dinosaur, still believing that, while erotic candor is good, true connection is even better.
Imagine being so evolved that you give birth a baby boy and immediately begin referring to him with the pronouns they/their. Not because he’s transgender; in fact, there’s every chance that he’s cisgender. But because you are so cleverly post-gender and so very modern. And imagine if marriage, to you, is nothing more than a script, divorce reinforces the supremacy of marriage, and life, in effect, ends for women in their 40s when they become perimenopausal. One more thing. Imagine if pulling out a bloody tampon is an act of eroticism.
If you agree with all of this, you are the audience for this book. I’m obviously not. There is some great writing and plot development here. Our narrator, Claire, goes on a solitary driving trip and ends up in shabby motel just miles from home. She’s got some money to burn, so she redecorates her motel room to the tune of $20k. Her decorator is the wife of a much-younger man she meets at a gas station. She wants to fuck him.So far so good. I can dig that fantasy.
Then she has an emotionally intense affair with said man, in that room. Now we’re in Erica Jong Fear of Flying territory. She eventually realizes that some of this is because of her fading libido. (Some of the best writing is in her recognition of what menopause wrecks on the female body. It’s akin to a nine-year-old looking at the skeleton of a dinosaur and realizing for the first time that she is also going to die someday).
All Four has its possibilities. It’s quirky and audacious and has sparks of insight into the female (dare I say that?) condition and the role of fantasy. But at times, I feel that it tries so hard to be postmodern, relevant, nihilistic, and cool. I guess I’m that dinosaur, still believing that, while erotic candor is good, true connection is even better.
July 10, 2024
ok, i'm going to type this out in a way that i hope that people will understand.
i absolutely believe that there should be more literature about women discussing and exploring their beliefs on motherhood, sex, their bodies, gender, etc. that is a no brainer in my opinion, and it is literature that must be supported as middle-aged women are often silenced.
with that out of the way,
it would be great if i could read a book by a well-known female author who wasn't under the impression that descriptions of cutting matted hair from a dog's ass or running her hands under her husband's pee was "original", "sharp", or "illuminating" writing.
i am so BORED of this type of lit fic that equates "disgusting" bodily fluids/acts as provocative and therefore, interesting, writing.
it isn't!
and if you are willing to go there then at least make a goddamn point that's better explored and more nuanced than "shoving my hand up our dogs' ass was how my husband and i reunited our connection."
also, i am sick and tired of the theme that opening up your relationship/going poly inherently means that you are more mature, intelligent, and sophisticated than another. i really don't understand how we got to this stage of believing that monogamy=immaturity/naivete and being poly=maturity/wisdom.
i was looking for a introspective story about a middle aged woman, roadtrips, change, and an examination of all types of relationships.
what i received was the most generic, millenial, ChatGPT-coded book that literally believes that discussing "gross" things makes the content refreshing/intelligent/good, and that after a solo cross-country trip, the solution to fix or reconnect with your partner is opening up your marriage.
nothing about this book read as "tender" or "moving." It was written in a way that was so narcisstic and self-centered.
so boring. so typical. so predictable.
the half star is for the ONE (1) paragraph that i loved where the narrator leaves her house for her roadtrip and feels as if she isn't far enough to start listening to podcasts, music, etc. THAT was breathtaking writing.
i absolutely believe that there should be more literature about women discussing and exploring their beliefs on motherhood, sex, their bodies, gender, etc. that is a no brainer in my opinion, and it is literature that must be supported as middle-aged women are often silenced.
with that out of the way,
it would be great if i could read a book by a well-known female author who wasn't under the impression that descriptions of cutting matted hair from a dog's ass or running her hands under her husband's pee was "original", "sharp", or "illuminating" writing.
i am so BORED of this type of lit fic that equates "disgusting" bodily fluids/acts as provocative and therefore, interesting, writing.
it isn't!
and if you are willing to go there then at least make a goddamn point that's better explored and more nuanced than "shoving my hand up our dogs' ass was how my husband and i reunited our connection."
also, i am sick and tired of the theme that opening up your relationship/going poly inherently means that you are more mature, intelligent, and sophisticated than another. i really don't understand how we got to this stage of believing that monogamy=immaturity/naivete and being poly=maturity/wisdom.
i was looking for a introspective story about a middle aged woman, roadtrips, change, and an examination of all types of relationships.
what i received was the most generic, millenial, ChatGPT-coded book that literally believes that discussing "gross" things makes the content refreshing/intelligent/good, and that after a solo cross-country trip, the solution to fix or reconnect with your partner is opening up your marriage.
nothing about this book read as "tender" or "moving." It was written in a way that was so narcisstic and self-centered.
so boring. so typical. so predictable.
the half star is for the ONE (1) paragraph that i loved where the narrator leaves her house for her roadtrip and feels as if she isn't far enough to start listening to podcasts, music, etc. THAT was breathtaking writing.
Read
June 14, 2024Miranda July OB tampon user confirmed
June 17, 2024
Porn. Let's just call it as it is. This is porn.
Or as we bookish people say, erotica.
Erotica is the Playboy magazine of books. We get to say we got it just for the articles/story. Wink, wink.
I'll admit it, I was hooked. Usually sex between men and women grosses me out and I don't want to read about it. However, being in the protagonist's head, I could not stop reading.
It was kinda like watching dogs having sex, unable to look away but feeling a bit horrified by the act. I mean, they're screwed together for fuck's sake. They cannot escape each other for up to a half hour.
Doesn't matter that they both came (I'm assuming dogs orgasm?) or that the female decides she really can't stand this dude anymore or whatever. There's no walking away for either of them and if the male gets anxious because she's talking too much, it's gonna take longer before they're able to get apart.
Not fun to see but, man, it's hard not to look. And that's how I was with this novel, peeking at the characters, a little grossed out but absolutely stuck watching them.
There's lesbian sex in the second half (our unnamed protagonist is bi) so that was much more palatable though oddly I never got turned on from reading it,didn't feel like masturba.... TMI
Like good erotica, there is a plot, there is a story, there's even a message here. It's healthy for women to have a sex drive and there's no shame in being sexual.
Our protagonist is having a midlife crisis which propels her into a somewhat affair. As the book goes on, she learns to free herself, say fuck you to what's deemed normal and culturally appropriate, to find her voice and be herself.
I love how the author doesn't hold back and also how she shows that women don't cease to exist or matter as soon as we're no longer able to reproduce.
This might be porn, but it's porn with a damn good message and is told in such a funny, witty way that is highly entertaining.
See, I did read it for the story 😉😉
Or as we bookish people say, erotica.
Erotica is the Playboy magazine of books. We get to say we got it just for the articles/story. Wink, wink.
I'll admit it, I was hooked. Usually sex between men and women grosses me out and I don't want to read about it. However, being in the protagonist's head, I could not stop reading.
It was kinda like watching dogs having sex, unable to look away but feeling a bit horrified by the act. I mean, they're screwed together for fuck's sake. They cannot escape each other for up to a half hour.
Doesn't matter that they both came (I'm assuming dogs orgasm?) or that the female decides she really can't stand this dude anymore or whatever. There's no walking away for either of them and if the male gets anxious because she's talking too much, it's gonna take longer before they're able to get apart.
Not fun to see but, man, it's hard not to look. And that's how I was with this novel, peeking at the characters, a little grossed out but absolutely stuck watching them.
There's lesbian sex in the second half (our unnamed protagonist is bi) so that was much more palatable though oddly I never got turned on from reading it,
Like good erotica, there is a plot, there is a story, there's even a message here. It's healthy for women to have a sex drive and there's no shame in being sexual.
Our protagonist is having a midlife crisis which propels her into a somewhat affair. As the book goes on, she learns to free herself, say fuck you to what's deemed normal and culturally appropriate, to find her voice and be herself.
I love how the author doesn't hold back and also how she shows that women don't cease to exist or matter as soon as we're no longer able to reproduce.
This might be porn, but it's porn with a damn good message and is told in such a funny, witty way that is highly entertaining.
See, I did read it for the story 😉😉
August 23, 2024
Everyone needs a Jordi in their life
June 10, 2024
Yes, there's lots of sex, but what struck me most was how beautiful and moving this novel was about a woman at absolute mid-life and her fears that the second half will be a deep dive into despair and ever lessening pleasures. That doesn't mean that the novel also isn't funny as hell: it often is. The tone is wry and gently comic, and some of the smallest asides had me laughing out loud. But there is a depth to the tale that's easy to miss if you're focused only the narrator's exploration of what she craves physically.
April 24, 2024
"It's hard to be knocked down when you're on all fours."
In what seems to be a semi-autobiographical novel, July relates the story of an artist who plans to travel cross country by car, but ends her journey in a town half an hour away from her husband and child, where she becomes obsessed with a local man. At times hilarious, and occasionally heartbreaking, I suspect this will be a love-it-or-hate-it title, depending on whether or not you like the narrator, or approve of her choices. This was definitely the best WTF novel I've read in a while, and I was definitely never bored.
AND she had me online shopping for anything Tonka bean.
"No reason" was turning out to be a major theme in life.
Thanks to NetGalley and Riverhead Books for sharing this.
In what seems to be a semi-autobiographical novel, July relates the story of an artist who plans to travel cross country by car, but ends her journey in a town half an hour away from her husband and child, where she becomes obsessed with a local man. At times hilarious, and occasionally heartbreaking, I suspect this will be a love-it-or-hate-it title, depending on whether or not you like the narrator, or approve of her choices. This was definitely the best WTF novel I've read in a while, and I was definitely never bored.
AND she had me online shopping for anything Tonka bean.
"No reason" was turning out to be a major theme in life.
Thanks to NetGalley and Riverhead Books for sharing this.
August 16, 2024
4.5
closing this book and not being able to think anything other than “what a ride”.
miranda’s writing is just so fantastic and made this such a cool reading experience beyond a solid fiction story. she bends your personal perspectives & opinions on motherhood, aging, fertility, monogamy, career etc in a way that leaves you feeling like there is so much more choice than what you previously felt you had, and how was it possible to unconciously box yourself in so much?! it’s done so masterfully as well alongside an engaging story of a woman in her mid forties whose attempts to be a driver lead her into chaos that eventually crystallizes into such a tender and hopeful coming of later age. what an awesome book to read in the after summer, before fall hazy sweet spot of the year.
closing this book and not being able to think anything other than “what a ride”.
miranda’s writing is just so fantastic and made this such a cool reading experience beyond a solid fiction story. she bends your personal perspectives & opinions on motherhood, aging, fertility, monogamy, career etc in a way that leaves you feeling like there is so much more choice than what you previously felt you had, and how was it possible to unconciously box yourself in so much?! it’s done so masterfully as well alongside an engaging story of a woman in her mid forties whose attempts to be a driver lead her into chaos that eventually crystallizes into such a tender and hopeful coming of later age. what an awesome book to read in the after summer, before fall hazy sweet spot of the year.
May 31, 2024
As so often, I wish I could give different stars in different categories.
July's writing is flawless, propulsive, and laugh out loud funny.
She's telling a story (middle aged mother as erotic protagonist) that is too seldom told.
I read it in one night, staying up until 1:30AM to do so, which for this middled aged mother is a mark of high praise and willingness to set aside other critical tasks that needed to be done early the next morning.
And when I was done I felt like you do after eating too much Halloween candy: it tasted really good at the time, but afterwards you feel kind of empty and sick.
The title of this book could have been _Menopause for POPs (the Privileged One Percent)_.
The protagonist not only has no problems that can't be solved by fucking someone different while having different fantasies, she does not seem to be AWARE of any problems that can't be solved by fucking someone different while having different fantasies.
Actually, she doesn't seem that aware of other people (outside her nuclear family and occasionally her parents) at all, so I suppose it stands to reason that she might not be aware of their problems. That it's not normal to live in a house that's worth $1.8M (an oddly specific number thrown in at random, perhaps to impress us, because financial considerations never enter into her decision-making). That lots of people don't have houses to live in at all. That there are folks whose child care problems are not even partially solved by having a nanny. That, I don't know, climate change is happening.
Maybe part of the radicalism of the book is that it unapologetically puts the problem of women as artists in a misogynistic world front and center. But the problem of wealthy white American women as artists in a misogynistic world is a big problem for those who have it, but not that many have it.
July's writing is flawless, propulsive, and laugh out loud funny.
She's telling a story (middle aged mother as erotic protagonist) that is too seldom told.
I read it in one night, staying up until 1:30AM to do so, which for this middled aged mother is a mark of high praise and willingness to set aside other critical tasks that needed to be done early the next morning.
And when I was done I felt like you do after eating too much Halloween candy: it tasted really good at the time, but afterwards you feel kind of empty and sick.
The title of this book could have been _Menopause for POPs (the Privileged One Percent)_.
The protagonist not only has no problems that can't be solved by fucking someone different while having different fantasies, she does not seem to be AWARE of any problems that can't be solved by fucking someone different while having different fantasies.
Actually, she doesn't seem that aware of other people (outside her nuclear family and occasionally her parents) at all, so I suppose it stands to reason that she might not be aware of their problems. That it's not normal to live in a house that's worth $1.8M (an oddly specific number thrown in at random, perhaps to impress us, because financial considerations never enter into her decision-making). That lots of people don't have houses to live in at all. That there are folks whose child care problems are not even partially solved by having a nanny. That, I don't know, climate change is happening.
Maybe part of the radicalism of the book is that it unapologetically puts the problem of women as artists in a misogynistic world front and center. But the problem of wealthy white American women as artists in a misogynistic world is a big problem for those who have it, but not that many have it.
April 12, 2024
Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.
I'm afraid I didn't think this was very good at all. I LOVED The First Bad Man (should I go back and reread it? Will it stand the test of time?). I am NOT a fan of 'quirky' literature at all, so the fact that that novel impressed me is a HUGE ACHIEVEMENT. I found it moving and bold, with wonderfully memorable characterisation and filled with surprises. I think July's work is best when it makes you see the world afresh and anew.
Why, then, did All Fours leave me so cold? I think the part where it first lost me is when the narrator paid the girl $20,000 to decorate the hotel room, I was like, uh oh, this is cartoony, and I need to accept that. Did part of me just... struggle to accept the cartooniness time around? After all, exaggeration has always been a big part of July's work! Did I feel jealous of how wealthy this character was, living in a house valued at 1.5 million dollars with seemingly no financial issue in the way of her sexual liberation? Yes, I know it's bitchy and pointless of me to resent a well-off character - there's nothing wrong with writing about rich people with stable real estate situations. But still - I just felt so tired and numb reading this! I'm the problem, it's me!
Another problem (apart from the cartooniness) is that I did not find Davey a very interesting , sexy, or desirable character, which became an issue (contrast this to the sexy merman in Melissa Broder's The Pisces). I kept comparing this book to Broder, which was perhaps unfair. People who think this book is 'rauncy' and 'out there' - dude. Other issues: I did not find the freshness and risk of The First Bad Man here (of either language or characterisation). I also felt the book was way too long and dragged.
Maybe the problem was me and my attention span, and this was just not the book for me at this point in my life, and I should try reading it again in the future (it will definitely find lots of other fans and be popular with other readers). It's definitely great that she's exploring these themes (pre-menopause and the female midlife crisis). I just felt really bored and tired when reading this. However, I will be reading reviews of this book once it's published because it's very likely that I just didn't give this a fair chance.
I'm afraid I didn't think this was very good at all. I LOVED The First Bad Man (should I go back and reread it? Will it stand the test of time?). I am NOT a fan of 'quirky' literature at all, so the fact that that novel impressed me is a HUGE ACHIEVEMENT. I found it moving and bold, with wonderfully memorable characterisation and filled with surprises. I think July's work is best when it makes you see the world afresh and anew.
Why, then, did All Fours leave me so cold? I think the part where it first lost me is when the narrator paid the girl $20,000 to decorate the hotel room, I was like, uh oh, this is cartoony, and I need to accept that. Did part of me just... struggle to accept the cartooniness time around? After all, exaggeration has always been a big part of July's work! Did I feel jealous of how wealthy this character was, living in a house valued at 1.5 million dollars with seemingly no financial issue in the way of her sexual liberation? Yes, I know it's bitchy and pointless of me to resent a well-off character - there's nothing wrong with writing about rich people with stable real estate situations. But still - I just felt so tired and numb reading this! I'm the problem, it's me!
Another problem (apart from the cartooniness) is that I did not find Davey a very interesting , sexy, or desirable character, which became an issue (contrast this to the sexy merman in Melissa Broder's The Pisces). I kept comparing this book to Broder, which was perhaps unfair. People who think this book is 'rauncy' and 'out there' - dude. Other issues: I did not find the freshness and risk of The First Bad Man here (of either language or characterisation). I also felt the book was way too long and dragged.
Maybe the problem was me and my attention span, and this was just not the book for me at this point in my life, and I should try reading it again in the future (it will definitely find lots of other fans and be popular with other readers). It's definitely great that she's exploring these themes (pre-menopause and the female midlife crisis). I just felt really bored and tired when reading this. However, I will be reading reviews of this book once it's published because it's very likely that I just didn't give this a fair chance.
May 21, 2024
(4.5)
Brilliant. You're going to think this book is overhyped- it's not. Miranda July is simply that good.
This is an excavation, this is a channeling, this is a come to Jesus conversation with the self about honesty, desire, truth, and longing. The book is frank in its depiction of sex, yearning, craving, and lust, but there's a humanity that thrums behind every word.
A must-read for anyone refusing to be honest with themselves about their own truth and those who seek to uncover a life beyond the boundaries of conformity.
Brilliant. You're going to think this book is overhyped- it's not. Miranda July is simply that good.
This is an excavation, this is a channeling, this is a come to Jesus conversation with the self about honesty, desire, truth, and longing. The book is frank in its depiction of sex, yearning, craving, and lust, but there's a humanity that thrums behind every word.
A must-read for anyone refusing to be honest with themselves about their own truth and those who seek to uncover a life beyond the boundaries of conformity.
June 7, 2024
I read this book the week I turn 44 (all fours) and for a while there it held me completely. I was obsessed. July reads the audio herself firstly!!! There were so many lines and moments (I’ll just take my spoons and leave, every day is Tuesday, the sandwich scene, the tampon scene, the hormonal cliff) that will inhabit my being. I could do little else beside reading this book and thinking about this book and thinking about this book and thinking about this book. I’ve never rated July’s fiction that highly but this was headed to five stars quickly. But the final third did not maintain the energy and propulsion of the first two thirds and the book ground to a bit of a halt. Endings are hard and this one didn’t land. But July hit for the rafters and I always love that risk even if it ultimately falls a little short. Seeing a perimenopausal 45 year old woman on the page felt positively revolutionary when it really shouldn’t. Thanks to everyone who listened while I obsessed over this novel. It was all consuming for a while there.
May 22, 2024
One of my first DNF books ever. The book is straight up weird and even if I was 40 and in a mid life crisis, I’m not sure I can relate to this woman at all. She lost me at the tampon foreplay I could NOT. I’m honestly shocked at all the rave reviews.
July 5, 2024
Miranda July is a certain flavor of author--depicting a world in which unusual people behave unpredictably, and thus she startles and amazes, charms and perplexes. The strangeness of All Fours lies in the performance-artist protagonist's unpredictable reactions to situations in which most of us would act in conventional ways. Namely, based on a semi-challenge by her husband, dividing the world into two types of people, "drivers" and "parkers" (the distinction never really clear) but putting himself and a woman he's talking to at a party in the category of "drivers"--the ones who follow through, who can tolerate the tedium of everyday life, and "parkers" who have to have drama... (as close as I can get it)... and calls her a "Parker." which stimulates her to undertake a cross country drive (to spend $20K she's been given by a whiskey company which has used a line of her writing_) Already a Miranda July character, who with an unexpected $20K decides she has to spend it in a completely frivolous way--taking a deluxe room at New York's Carlisle Hotel.
But of course, being a 'Parker'--or a completely left-field character, she bails on her plan a half-hour out of Los Angeles, and takes a very different course, a course only a Miranda July character would ever take, and coming into contact with other equally unusual people, and interacting with them in highly unusual ways.
So, there are times one asks one's self--why do I care about these people, so divorced from the reality most of us inhabit? And then we'll get the answer, almost immediately, through some insight, some arrangement, some understanding of the human condition you've thought of yourself maybe, but let slide away. What is normal, anyway, the book asks, and asks, and continues to ask, maybe the central question of all July's work.
The character, though highly anxious and self-absorbed, is also uniquely observant and surprisingly nonjudgmental, more curious than superior, which makes her an ideal vehicle to explore the questions of the book. The character is the kind of person random people are attracted to. She's undefended, and who can't remember being that person, especially as a young person, to whom people start telling the strangest stories.
I found myself writing down whole passages of All Fours, so keen is July's observation of the ways of contemporary life, of motherhood, marriage, sexuality, aging. Menopause! Matters which are hard to pin down and yet affect millions, the stuff of everybody's life.
For instance, getting ready for the cross country trip, she worries about her family, her child Sam (always 'they'):
"It was a two and half week trip. The longest I'd been away from Sam or Harris was two weeks, but this was the shortest it could comfortably be. I told myself that if I missed Sam too much or Sam missed me too much then I could simply fly home at any moment and pay someone on Craigslist to drive the car back to L.A. But Sam was unlikely to miss me at all since they were an out-of-sight-out-of-mind person. As was I. The real fear was that we would forget each other. That was always my underlying fear: that someone I loved would look at me like stranger. Or that I would take such a circuitous path away from someone that I could never find my way back to them. Even before her mild cognitive impairment, my mom always introduced herself when I answered the phone. This is your mother: Elaine..."
The character and her friend, talking about their sex lives:
"Who initiates? You, right?" I knew she was that sort of totally present, body-rooted lover who felt like sex was a basic need.
"Yes," she sighed. "It's always me."
"I'm the initiator too, actually, but only because I'm trying to get out ahead of the pressure."
"How often?"
"Once a week."
"Wow," she moaned. "I wish I was having sex once a week."
I laughed. We were so opposite.
"I see it like exercise," I said. "you don't ask yourself if you want to exercise, that's the wrong question."
"You don't exercise."
"I know, but if I did, I imagine it would be similar. I also don't love getting into pools, by the way. Sunday nights! Packing for trips! Any transition. Whatever state I'm in I just want to stay in it, if that's not too much to ask." It was though, for a married person. Sometimes I could hear Harris's dick whistling impatiently like a teakettle, at higher and higher pitches until I finally couldn't take it and so I initiated."
Here she is buying a a bedspread in an antique mall:
"It was the sort of very feminine and decadent thing I'd wanted my whole life; I was good at knowing what I wanted and then choosing something else at the very last second."
Little wonder why it's the book of the summer.
But of course, being a 'Parker'--or a completely left-field character, she bails on her plan a half-hour out of Los Angeles, and takes a very different course, a course only a Miranda July character would ever take, and coming into contact with other equally unusual people, and interacting with them in highly unusual ways.
So, there are times one asks one's self--why do I care about these people, so divorced from the reality most of us inhabit? And then we'll get the answer, almost immediately, through some insight, some arrangement, some understanding of the human condition you've thought of yourself maybe, but let slide away. What is normal, anyway, the book asks, and asks, and continues to ask, maybe the central question of all July's work.
The character, though highly anxious and self-absorbed, is also uniquely observant and surprisingly nonjudgmental, more curious than superior, which makes her an ideal vehicle to explore the questions of the book. The character is the kind of person random people are attracted to. She's undefended, and who can't remember being that person, especially as a young person, to whom people start telling the strangest stories.
I found myself writing down whole passages of All Fours, so keen is July's observation of the ways of contemporary life, of motherhood, marriage, sexuality, aging. Menopause! Matters which are hard to pin down and yet affect millions, the stuff of everybody's life.
For instance, getting ready for the cross country trip, she worries about her family, her child Sam (always 'they'):
"It was a two and half week trip. The longest I'd been away from Sam or Harris was two weeks, but this was the shortest it could comfortably be. I told myself that if I missed Sam too much or Sam missed me too much then I could simply fly home at any moment and pay someone on Craigslist to drive the car back to L.A. But Sam was unlikely to miss me at all since they were an out-of-sight-out-of-mind person. As was I. The real fear was that we would forget each other. That was always my underlying fear: that someone I loved would look at me like stranger. Or that I would take such a circuitous path away from someone that I could never find my way back to them. Even before her mild cognitive impairment, my mom always introduced herself when I answered the phone. This is your mother: Elaine..."
The character and her friend, talking about their sex lives:
"Who initiates? You, right?" I knew she was that sort of totally present, body-rooted lover who felt like sex was a basic need.
"Yes," she sighed. "It's always me."
"I'm the initiator too, actually, but only because I'm trying to get out ahead of the pressure."
"How often?"
"Once a week."
"Wow," she moaned. "I wish I was having sex once a week."
I laughed. We were so opposite.
"I see it like exercise," I said. "you don't ask yourself if you want to exercise, that's the wrong question."
"You don't exercise."
"I know, but if I did, I imagine it would be similar. I also don't love getting into pools, by the way. Sunday nights! Packing for trips! Any transition. Whatever state I'm in I just want to stay in it, if that's not too much to ask." It was though, for a married person. Sometimes I could hear Harris's dick whistling impatiently like a teakettle, at higher and higher pitches until I finally couldn't take it and so I initiated."
Here she is buying a a bedspread in an antique mall:
"It was the sort of very feminine and decadent thing I'd wanted my whole life; I was good at knowing what I wanted and then choosing something else at the very last second."
Little wonder why it's the book of the summer.
May 18, 2024
This is an absolutely stunning book, a tour de force of self-discovery, self-love, acceptance of one’s fragility, I could go on forever. It’s raw and quirky, funny and eye-opening, and very, very authentic.
It’s been a while since I’ve read a book that honest and kind. I am in awe.
It’s been a while since I’ve read a book that honest and kind. I am in awe.
August 4, 2024
Melissa Broder’s Death Valley vibes
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