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All Fours
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Fiction (2024)A 2024 BOOK OF THE YEAR PICK FOR BBC R4 OPEN BOOK, THE OBSERVER, GQ, GRAZIA, HERO, I-D, NYLON
A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country from LA to NY. Thirty 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 45-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectations 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 semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country from LA to NY. Thirty 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 45-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectations 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.
403 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 14, 2024
24731 people are currently reading
268290 people want to read
About the author
Miranda July
35 books6,899 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 29,756 reviews
June 9, 2025
edit:
wow, okay, this review has gotten a lot of traction that i was not expecting at all. i'm not going to answer the people commenting because it's too much and i honestly don't have much more to say about this book. i do want to clarify a few things though:
1. i am actually a really big fan of miranda july and her work and have been to a couple of her readings and screenings
2. while her other work always moved me in some way, reading this book just felt hollow. there was no warmth or tenderness, and it didn't feel contemplative to me, even though it was tackling several complicated topics and themes. ultimately, for such an interesting premise, i found it extremely predictable and unstimulating
3. i am not an "eat pray love" or "colleen hoover" person LMFAO. see: my goodreads account
4. i don't mean "gross" in the way that i was actually disgusted by it--because i wasn't. i meant that it seemed like july was trying to be provocative, but it fell super flat for me and seemed to be like a strategy of shock for shock value's sake. i am a gross things enjoyer when it is well done. see: my undergrad work on the literature of dennis cooper
5. if you are a transphobe or have anything transphobic to say GET THE FUCK OUT of my review and comments! i was (and still am) looking forward to reading about mothers with questions about their gender because i find that important and fascinating.
6. i cannot believe this is the (book) hill so many of you are choosing to die on. i really like july but this is not work from dostoyevsky or wharton.
7. i'm very happy for those who got something special and vital from this book and i only feel sorry for myself that i couldn't. i go into every book wanting to be changed in some way.
8. that's all 🤷
---------
original review:
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 lover'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 failed 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.
wow, okay, this review has gotten a lot of traction that i was not expecting at all. i'm not going to answer the people commenting because it's too much and i honestly don't have much more to say about this book. i do want to clarify a few things though:
1. i am actually a really big fan of miranda july and her work and have been to a couple of her readings and screenings
2. while her other work always moved me in some way, reading this book just felt hollow. there was no warmth or tenderness, and it didn't feel contemplative to me, even though it was tackling several complicated topics and themes. ultimately, for such an interesting premise, i found it extremely predictable and unstimulating
3. i am not an "eat pray love" or "colleen hoover" person LMFAO. see: my goodreads account
4. i don't mean "gross" in the way that i was actually disgusted by it--because i wasn't. i meant that it seemed like july was trying to be provocative, but it fell super flat for me and seemed to be like a strategy of shock for shock value's sake. i am a gross things enjoyer when it is well done. see: my undergrad work on the literature of dennis cooper
5. if you are a transphobe or have anything transphobic to say GET THE FUCK OUT of my review and comments! i was (and still am) looking forward to reading about mothers with questions about their gender because i find that important and fascinating.
6. i cannot believe this is the (book) hill so many of you are choosing to die on. i really like july but this is not work from dostoyevsky or wharton.
7. i'm very happy for those who got something special and vital from this book and i only feel sorry for myself that i couldn't. i go into every book wanting to be changed in some way.
8. that's all 🤷
---------
original review:
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 lover'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 failed 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.
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.
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.
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?”
July 17, 2025
my favorite genre is women going insane.
and fittingly, i don't know what the hell just happened but i had such a good time.
https://emmareadstoomuch.substack.com...
this book felt like unfettered ballistic nonsense, and yet it explored so much: motherhood, menopause, monogamy, other big nouns that don't necessarily begin with M.
this is a book that has so many parts (the number of sentences in this where you're just like hm. ok. let me take a second to take that one in is unbelievable) and is still more than the sum of them.
even if it's a close call sometimes.
bottom line: doesn't take itself at all seriously and is still serious.
(thanks to the publisher for the copy)
and fittingly, i don't know what the hell just happened but i had such a good time.
https://emmareadstoomuch.substack.com...
this book felt like unfettered ballistic nonsense, and yet it explored so much: motherhood, menopause, monogamy, other big nouns that don't necessarily begin with M.
this is a book that has so many parts (the number of sentences in this where you're just like hm. ok. let me take a second to take that one in is unbelievable) and is still more than the sum of them.
even if it's a close call sometimes.
bottom line: doesn't take itself at all seriously and is still serious.
(thanks to the publisher for the copy)
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
March 24, 2024
lost me at the tampon foreplay and dog shit clean up
May 29, 2024
The writing is incredible and also I hated this book.
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.
June 25, 2024
put it down half way through, life’s too short to be annoyed voluntarily
August 23, 2024
Everyone needs a Jordi in their life
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.
September 17, 2024
I hate the main character. I don't usually use such decisive language but in this case it's warranted. She is catastrophically narcissistic, astonishingly immature, and utterly without integrity or any sense of accountability, not to mention blatantly misandrist (I won't even give her the excuse of "androphobic" because as I read it the text gives no indication of anyone or anything but her own neuroses interfering with her unacknowledged privilege). Her inability to drive across the country is elevated from embarrassing incapacity--for which she extracts worried attention from her friends and family--to the means by which she achieves "freedom" in a fever-dream "relationship" that ignores not only her family but also the guy in many significant ways, and his wife utterly. The protagonist actually imagines that somehow making a bed together constitutes the wife's consent to allowing the protagonist to drive over the wife's marriage vows as well--in biblical-ish language no less. So much for women honoring women. It's ok if it involves a man I guess, or we can just chalk it up to self-righteous solipsism.
All the other characters are foils and mirrors for her ego: she hardly describes Harris except as an annoying teapot and gives him one line of protest for unilaterally renegotiating the terms of their relationship. Even her kid (an 8 year old with whom she weirdly, intimately bathes) is denied even the most basic description: in context of her personal obsession with sex and gender, her refusal to gender the kid reads like an erasure of maleness, not an equilateral resistance of the binary. Her relationships are all illusion, her own fantasies projected without consent on the injects of her ardour. This book is as objectivist as the fountainhead--in her world like Dominique's truth and rightness only require a single will. In this case though, she is the rapist and her will, though certainly unfettered by anything outside her ego, lacks the directness and purity that at least puts an art deco shine on Howard's work.
It turns my stomach to read a person who virtue-signals as accepting and progressive when they are in fact only able to see their own feet while trying to look up their own vagina, smashing around rudderless and without account against anyone dumb enough to get close to her. It is disingenuous, offensive, and embarrassing. It's not even groundbreaking...so she got pee on her hand and someone touched her tampon. Read Bataille. Shit happens. Don't read this book. It, and everything it and she stands for, is toxic crap.
If you like this review, please leave a comment. Like the review and still like the book? Avoided the book because of the review? Something to add?
All the other characters are foils and mirrors for her ego: she hardly describes Harris except as an annoying teapot and gives him one line of protest for unilaterally renegotiating the terms of their relationship. Even her kid (an 8 year old with whom she weirdly, intimately bathes) is denied even the most basic description: in context of her personal obsession with sex and gender, her refusal to gender the kid reads like an erasure of maleness, not an equilateral resistance of the binary. Her relationships are all illusion, her own fantasies projected without consent on the injects of her ardour. This book is as objectivist as the fountainhead--in her world like Dominique's truth and rightness only require a single will. In this case though, she is the rapist and her will, though certainly unfettered by anything outside her ego, lacks the directness and purity that at least puts an art deco shine on Howard's work.
It turns my stomach to read a person who virtue-signals as accepting and progressive when they are in fact only able to see their own feet while trying to look up their own vagina, smashing around rudderless and without account against anyone dumb enough to get close to her. It is disingenuous, offensive, and embarrassing. It's not even groundbreaking...so she got pee on her hand and someone touched her tampon. Read Bataille. Shit happens. Don't read this book. It, and everything it and she stands for, is toxic crap.
If you like this review, please leave a comment. Like the review and still like the book? Avoided the book because of the review? Something to add?
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.
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.
October 1, 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 and immediately begin referring to that baby with the pronouns they/their. Not because the newborn is transgender; in fact, there’s every chance that the infant is 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 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 and immediately begin referring to that baby with the pronouns they/their. Not because the newborn is transgender; in fact, there’s every chance that the infant is 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 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.
June 2, 2025
BRILLIANT! such a way with words.
December 11, 2025
Most readers were distracted by the sideshows and missed the overall picture.
F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “I thought it was one purpose of critics and publishers to educate the public up to original work.”
So, Public, here I am doing my civic duty…..
In All Fours, we have an unnamed female narrator who is 45 and appears to be having a mid-life crisis. She plans to drive across the country to New York; however, once on her journey, she quickly abandons her plans and heads in a very different direction. There are numerous spicy scenes sprinkled throughout.
This unnamed narrator is what a modern day 45-year-old female Holden Caulfield would look like, and July is brilliant for sharing this brave work.
Now, I am going to reveal what this book is about, what most reviewers don’t seem to see.
The Green Light at the End of the Dock (How much I spent):
Hardcover Text – $16.39 on Pango
Audiobook – Free through Libby
Connect With Me!
Blog Threads BookTube Facebook Insta My Bookstore at Pango
F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “I thought it was one purpose of critics and publishers to educate the public up to original work.”
So, Public, here I am doing my civic duty…..
In All Fours, we have an unnamed female narrator who is 45 and appears to be having a mid-life crisis. She plans to drive across the country to New York; however, once on her journey, she quickly abandons her plans and heads in a very different direction. There are numerous spicy scenes sprinkled throughout.
This unnamed narrator is what a modern day 45-year-old female Holden Caulfield would look like, and July is brilliant for sharing this brave work.
Now, I am going to reveal what this book is about, what most reviewers don’t seem to see.
The Green Light at the End of the Dock (How much I spent):
Hardcover Text – $16.39 on Pango
Audiobook – Free through Libby
Connect With Me!
Blog Threads BookTube Facebook Insta My Bookstore at Pango
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
December 23, 2024
This book was written for fringe art enthusiasts, and I’m someone who proudly orders all of my prints from Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters. Reminded me of Big Swiss but with even less direction. Not for me to the highest degree.
Read
June 14, 2024Miranda July OB tampon user confirmed
May 15, 2025
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?
So, Miranda July.
Although I mostly manage not be aware of hypes simply because at least living ninety percent of the time under a stone, the call of Miranda July’s novel All Fours was simply too loud to ignore. Moreover, the witty and enthusiast reviews of friends raving about it made me dive into it as quickly as I could, even contenting myself with a digital copy, because there were five other readers on the waiting list of the library – something I never experienced with any book before. Admittedly, now even politicians openly testify about its impact on their functioning in the media, (peri)menopause seems to have turned from a taboo into a discussion-worthy topic. Maybe it is just this particular moment in my own life that makes me more aware of it, but I cannot remember having been showered with so much information about it in TV programs, books, magazines – making sure there is no escape, even if you prefer to behave like the proverbial ostrich. Who wants to read about HRT and dropping hormone levels, brain fog, aching limbs, gaining weight and growing hair everywhere, the dramatic loss of life quality and libido when you can spend your time cosily reading the piles of 19th century classics you might possible not get to anymore in this life instead? Reading (auto) fiction ingeniously toying with the topic seemed a less confronting and definitely more entertaining choice than watching videos of austere and frightening menopause coaches who advise you to make changes in your lifestyle in which the mountain of no-go’s only comes across as a big No to life (no coffee, no wine, no spicy food, waste away your sparse reading time exercising, scare the hell out of you with providing contradictory information on cancer). With so much death in life you might save yourself the effort and opt for immediate exit.
And this book, despite the suicides, is a big YES to life.
Nonetheless, everyone who is so fortunate to live long enough to reach this stage in life might be looking for an answer how to relate oneself to the undeniable running out of and progress of time, the changes that come with it and look for a panacea, or at least a strategy that works for some time.
How do we get from deploring decay to embracing the freedom to wear purple?
Raging against the dying of the light.
Some buy a motorcycle.
Some go hiking in the Himalayas or cycle to Santiago de Compostela.
Some have a lot of sex.
Some write a book about having a lot of sex.
Which is all fine with me. I hope Miranda July had fun writing it, perhaps it was even a little therapeutic to her. Her frenetic energy level isn’t mine and only reading about it exhausted me, but as a friend tells me, let’s celebrate diversity - and neurodivergence - in the work place, and why not, on every level in life. Freedom and happiness to all and whatever gets you through the night. As an alternative for the sorrow and misery tales one can spin from the struggling in this period of life, All Fours is refreshing. Alas, the slapstick and absurdities mostly fell flat on me and thought-provoking as it might be, as a novel it left me rather indifferent, finding myself slouching through whole chunks of it that I experienced as repetitive and tedious, in which some pruning might have been welcome. In that way, this novel mirrors life, one has to take the less interesting chapters with the good, in the dark how the whole package will turn out and what will happen next, or not.
A last burn before fading away, before becoming invisible but to men who are twice your age? In a way ‘getting invisible’ is liberating too (their loss). Yes, life is not fair, aging works in different ways for men and women – and not all men are as kind and understanding as the doting and patient husband of the narrator (perhaps getting oversensitive is part of the transition too, freezing when that old friend feels the need to start snickering over your hot flashes when you finally arrive at the restaurant you were to meet each other, still panting from running to make it in time, when you in turn have been so kind to reassure him he hasn’t changed?)
"No reason" was turning out to be a major theme in life. Generally speaking, when real pain was involved, there was no reason. No one to hold accountable. No apology. Pain just was; it radiated with no narrative and no end."
Because there are some flashes (pun intended) in the middle of the book that sounded recognisable in parts - this book at least has the merit to make me wonder about the experiences of my middle-aged friends, our common silence and tightness about it, with some exceptions – a friend who’s job is at risk because she was overwhelmed by the transition for some time. Lately I was reminded of Thomas Mann’s last novella Die Betrogene (The Black Swan) and his astute , cruel psychological evocation of a woman in the same stage of life who falls in love with a young man and misreads her own body with a horrible outcome. Although it doesn’t seem fair to compare Thomas Mann’s novella to Miranda July’s novel, the novella left me awestruck and crushed when reading it in my thirties, while I have to admit I found it hard to care about July’s unflagging narrator.
Whatever one might think about this novel, Miranda July is on the crest of the wave with it. With (peri)menopause as a subject that is (finally?) ‘hot’, with her perfect timing she cannily surfs on the current waves of attention for it, as well as powerfully bringing it to the centre of the fore herself. The fact that so many readers can relate to All Fours despite the quite extravagant life-style of the artist-narrator going wild in the novel, speaks volumes about the necessity of this book and why people welcome it with glee in their life.
July jubilantly dances nakedly in front of the ones who are still in denial or dismissive about women’s needs and feelings once they are nearing the cliff – or have already fallen into it, sticking out her tongue. It struck me as just another loathable manifestation of misogyny that the life quality of women once they aren’t potential mothers anymore is not taken seriously (see the cuts in funding research programs regarding to women’s health, menopause and osteoporosis).
Having no ‘bucket list’, living from day to day, it is Mary Oliver’s question that comes to mind, a question to pose oneself regardless of which phase one is in:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
So, Miranda July.
Although I mostly manage not be aware of hypes simply because at least living ninety percent of the time under a stone, the call of Miranda July’s novel All Fours was simply too loud to ignore. Moreover, the witty and enthusiast reviews of friends raving about it made me dive into it as quickly as I could, even contenting myself with a digital copy, because there were five other readers on the waiting list of the library – something I never experienced with any book before. Admittedly, now even politicians openly testify about its impact on their functioning in the media, (peri)menopause seems to have turned from a taboo into a discussion-worthy topic. Maybe it is just this particular moment in my own life that makes me more aware of it, but I cannot remember having been showered with so much information about it in TV programs, books, magazines – making sure there is no escape, even if you prefer to behave like the proverbial ostrich. Who wants to read about HRT and dropping hormone levels, brain fog, aching limbs, gaining weight and growing hair everywhere, the dramatic loss of life quality and libido when you can spend your time cosily reading the piles of 19th century classics you might possible not get to anymore in this life instead? Reading (auto) fiction ingeniously toying with the topic seemed a less confronting and definitely more entertaining choice than watching videos of austere and frightening menopause coaches who advise you to make changes in your lifestyle in which the mountain of no-go’s only comes across as a big No to life (no coffee, no wine, no spicy food, waste away your sparse reading time exercising, scare the hell out of you with providing contradictory information on cancer). With so much death in life you might save yourself the effort and opt for immediate exit.
And this book, despite the suicides, is a big YES to life.
Nonetheless, everyone who is so fortunate to live long enough to reach this stage in life might be looking for an answer how to relate oneself to the undeniable running out of and progress of time, the changes that come with it and look for a panacea, or at least a strategy that works for some time.
How do we get from deploring decay to embracing the freedom to wear purple?
Raging against the dying of the light.
Some buy a motorcycle.
Some go hiking in the Himalayas or cycle to Santiago de Compostela.
Some have a lot of sex.
Some write a book about having a lot of sex.
Which is all fine with me. I hope Miranda July had fun writing it, perhaps it was even a little therapeutic to her. Her frenetic energy level isn’t mine and only reading about it exhausted me, but as a friend tells me, let’s celebrate diversity - and neurodivergence - in the work place, and why not, on every level in life. Freedom and happiness to all and whatever gets you through the night. As an alternative for the sorrow and misery tales one can spin from the struggling in this period of life, All Fours is refreshing. Alas, the slapstick and absurdities mostly fell flat on me and thought-provoking as it might be, as a novel it left me rather indifferent, finding myself slouching through whole chunks of it that I experienced as repetitive and tedious, in which some pruning might have been welcome. In that way, this novel mirrors life, one has to take the less interesting chapters with the good, in the dark how the whole package will turn out and what will happen next, or not.
A last burn before fading away, before becoming invisible but to men who are twice your age? In a way ‘getting invisible’ is liberating too (their loss). Yes, life is not fair, aging works in different ways for men and women – and not all men are as kind and understanding as the doting and patient husband of the narrator (perhaps getting oversensitive is part of the transition too, freezing when that old friend feels the need to start snickering over your hot flashes when you finally arrive at the restaurant you were to meet each other, still panting from running to make it in time, when you in turn have been so kind to reassure him he hasn’t changed?)
"No reason" was turning out to be a major theme in life. Generally speaking, when real pain was involved, there was no reason. No one to hold accountable. No apology. Pain just was; it radiated with no narrative and no end."
Because there are some flashes (pun intended) in the middle of the book that sounded recognisable in parts - this book at least has the merit to make me wonder about the experiences of my middle-aged friends, our common silence and tightness about it, with some exceptions – a friend who’s job is at risk because she was overwhelmed by the transition for some time. Lately I was reminded of Thomas Mann’s last novella Die Betrogene (The Black Swan) and his astute , cruel psychological evocation of a woman in the same stage of life who falls in love with a young man and misreads her own body with a horrible outcome. Although it doesn’t seem fair to compare Thomas Mann’s novella to Miranda July’s novel, the novella left me awestruck and crushed when reading it in my thirties, while I have to admit I found it hard to care about July’s unflagging narrator.
Whatever one might think about this novel, Miranda July is on the crest of the wave with it. With (peri)menopause as a subject that is (finally?) ‘hot’, with her perfect timing she cannily surfs on the current waves of attention for it, as well as powerfully bringing it to the centre of the fore herself. The fact that so many readers can relate to All Fours despite the quite extravagant life-style of the artist-narrator going wild in the novel, speaks volumes about the necessity of this book and why people welcome it with glee in their life.
July jubilantly dances nakedly in front of the ones who are still in denial or dismissive about women’s needs and feelings once they are nearing the cliff – or have already fallen into it, sticking out her tongue. It struck me as just another loathable manifestation of misogyny that the life quality of women once they aren’t potential mothers anymore is not taken seriously (see the cuts in funding research programs regarding to women’s health, menopause and osteoporosis).
Having no ‘bucket list’, living from day to day, it is Mary Oliver’s question that comes to mind, a question to pose oneself regardless of which phase one is in:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
October 30, 2024
dreadful. is the basis of an edgy HBO limited series adaptation that gets a Rotten Tomatoes score of 36 waiting to happen.
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.”
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.
January 17, 2025
Oh Miranda what did you do – I thought I was a fan but this was terrible.
Our two constant companions for this novel are Cringey and Icky. They never leave our side. The “semi-famous artist” (think “Miranda July”) who narrates this body-fluid-drenched tale wafts around in a hyper-self-aware therapy-besessioned gym-bunnying frequently-massaged chi-centered spaced-out zone of Californian affluence where everyone is a creative but the pine-scented air is thick with that sinking feeling that you are not living your most authentic life. Boo hoo!
So our 45 year old semi-famous artist goes on a sexual quest. But being all about older women, menopause, anti-heteronormality and unfulfilled desire does not automatically translate into a novel anyone would should or could read.
Sample quotes :
Yin-yang and the whole thing. I wasn’t fatter or thinner; I’d incarnated.
I’d forgotten the nonlinear, open-plan quality of lesbian sex, but it came right back. Her orgasms made me think of a whale breaching out of the water
And then some detours into selfhelpery :
If there was anything meaningful about aging, it was tunnelling back in time together, holding memories as a couple so they made a kind of safe basket in a rough and arbitrary world.
I was smiling when I picked up this novel but my smile gradually turned upside down.
One star applied firmly.
Our two constant companions for this novel are Cringey and Icky. They never leave our side. The “semi-famous artist” (think “Miranda July”) who narrates this body-fluid-drenched tale wafts around in a hyper-self-aware therapy-besessioned gym-bunnying frequently-massaged chi-centered spaced-out zone of Californian affluence where everyone is a creative but the pine-scented air is thick with that sinking feeling that you are not living your most authentic life. Boo hoo!
So our 45 year old semi-famous artist goes on a sexual quest. But being all about older women, menopause, anti-heteronormality and unfulfilled desire does not automatically translate into a novel anyone would should or could read.
Sample quotes :
Yin-yang and the whole thing. I wasn’t fatter or thinner; I’d incarnated.
I’d forgotten the nonlinear, open-plan quality of lesbian sex, but it came right back. Her orgasms made me think of a whale breaching out of the water
And then some detours into selfhelpery :
If there was anything meaningful about aging, it was tunnelling back in time together, holding memories as a couple so they made a kind of safe basket in a rough and arbitrary world.
I was smiling when I picked up this novel but my smile gradually turned upside down.
One star applied firmly.
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.
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.
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.
June 9, 2024
I don’t know how to rate this book. I couldn’t put it down, but I kind of hated everyone in it.
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