All Fours

When I was a teenager, I wondered why there were no coming of age novels for girls like A Catcher in the Rye for boys. Of course, that was remedied decades ago. But where were the mid-life crisis novels for women? I never even thought of that, although there are many mid-life crisis novels about men. I can guess why. Perimenopause is the antithesis of glamorous in a world where women are relegated to their appearance and their sex. But Miranda July wrote a very, very tongue-in-cheek, very California novel about going through perimenopause and out the other side. Expect everything to be exaggerated, expect fantasy. And don't take it too seriously.

Wow. This book was a wild ride full of unsexy sex and neurosis careening from one emotion to the next. It was like watching a car crash but everyone in the car is naked. It was the funniest, most interesting and completely bizarre book I've ever read about menopause. If I had known all this ahead of time, I likely wouldn't have read it but I'm glad I was clueless.

A semi famous artist leaves on a three-week road trip from California to New York and back, leaving her husband and child at home. Instead of driving to NY, she takes the first exit and spends the time in a motel 30 minutes from home. It's all supposed to be this amazing, deep journey, but it just reminded me of the meaninglessness of the NYT Bestseller list. Popular does not equal good. Our main character (who is never named), is a vain, selfish, self-absorbed person who is so focused on herself that it never occurs to her to consider anyone else in her decisions. She is unhinged and overly dramatic when addressing everything from making school lunches to dealing with menopause-induced vertigo. I have dealt with both. My results were show more much the same as hers on both counts, and her reactions made me want to tell her to go touch grass (something her best friend in the book tells her too!). The sexual descriptions are vulgar and over the top. I only finished it because it was a book club book, and I'm adding the gushing authors on the book jacket to my DNR list. show less

This is a novel that invites strong feelings. You'll love it or you'll hate it, but you will not be bored. The book centers on a forty-something woman living in LA, who decides to drive to a planned week in New York instead of flying. She makes it to Monrovia, one of the bland cities surrounding Los Angeles, and checks into a dumpy motel. And the next day, instead of continuing her trip, she just stays. She becomes fixated on a young man who works at Hertz and renovates her motel room, lying to her husband and child about her trip but confiding in a friend about her obsession for Davey, the Hertz employee.

The protagonist here is entirely self-centered in a way that is less selfish than it is insecure. Everything is about her and since show more her emotions careen wildly from extreme to extreme, there's nowhere to feel balanced or calm. It's exhausting living in her head, what with all the panic going on between bouts of despair and euphoria. But this isn't just a novel about a woman going off the rails, it's also about how women age and what that means to them. Beginning with the protagonist's outrage at what menopause might mean to her, July spins out into a more balanced look at how middle age brings positive changes as well. And it's cleverly done, even if the exaggerated style of telling the story didn't appeal to me. show less

The novel's first person narration, and with the audiobook narrated by Miranda July, it's no wonder we are seduced into thinking this is autobiographical - it's not.

In a Vogue article, July says about the main character: "But I thought, well, maybe instead of going out of my way to say she’s not me—she has straight hair and she’s a dentist, you know—it would be more interesting to just kind of head into it and borrow that auto-fictional ambiguity that I enjoy in Sheila Heti and Dodie Bellamy. Maybe I could be sort of generous and actually share my position with my narrator. Maybe that’s a more fun way to address this problem—to use it as a tool to help tell the fictional story and hope it adds some energy.” Thankfully, All show more Fours fizzes with the kind of offbeat spark that only July can conjure."

I found that part fascinating - the deliberate blurring of the fiction non-fiction genres. Also, her scratchy voice suits the contents - the effect is more like acting than narrating.

The book's narrator is sooo personal, giving her most embarrassing and intimate thoughts, the book does indeed "fizz" with authenticity and freshness, as well as countless cringeworthy and anxiety-inducing moments.

I'm glad I've read it as it breaks a mould, but did I enjoy it ... beyond an embarrassing fascination? show less

I found this novel to be very performative, in keeping with Miranda July's career as a sort-of counter-culture artistic "It" girl. I don't mind unlikeable characters, even when they are the main character, but when they are the *only* full-formed one and the novel is almost entirely interior, it's A LOT. I found the narrator to be exhausting to spend time with, I didn't understand her, I didn't like her, and I just wanted her to stop already. Thankfully, the book is a reasonable length and except for the beginning, which I found slow, pretty well-paced.

However, and as my book group discussed for 2+ hours, there were themes in this book to be dissected, analyzed, and appreciated. So many novels deal with men at mid-life, it's refreshing show more to see one from a female perspective receive so much attention. What I find fascinating is the idea of the stereotypical "mid-life crisis" of men, when it is women who actually undergo significant biological change that is often downplayed even by their own doctors (I'm looking at my GP here...). And it is often these same women who bear much of the burden of homemaking and child-rearing and keeping shit together. So. Brava to July for highlighting the hypcrisy and letting her narrator decide to break out and break free.

All that said, I have zero interest in revisiting this book or seeking out any of July's other work.

3.5 stars because I'm in a generous mood

NB: I had heard a lot about how "racy" and "spicy" and "over the top" the book was, but didn't find it so at all. There were definitely some scenes that gave me the ick but to each her own. As one of my book club friends said, "I like to see a person's freak flag fly." show less

In All Fours by Miranda July, we meet an unnamed narrator—a married artist with a young child—who is experiencing a mid-life crisis of seismic proportions. As the novel opens, she sets out on a cross-country car trip from Los Angeles to New York for the ostensible purpose of connecting with professional associates on a new project. However, before making it out of town, she impulsively veers off the road and settles in a non-descript motel room for the next two weeks. She spends thousands of dollars renovating the motel room to make it into a private space and becomes emotionally entangled with a younger man who works at a nearby car rental agency and is also married. Thus begins the narrator’s personal process of reinventing show more herself, a journey that will involve a lot of delusional soul-searching, sexual activity (both self-inflicted and with other people), angsty obsessions over aging and creative fallowness, coming to grips with the trauma associated with her child’s birth, and, ultimately, a complete reconfiguration of her family structure. By the end, the narrator regains her ability to write, but she seems no wiser for her hard-won transformation.

I would love to say that I found all of this to be engaging, enlightening, and entertaining but, sadly, that was not the case. In fact, it has been quite some time since I have read a novel that was as off-putting as All Fours. My primary complaint would have to be that I found the main character to be thoroughly detestable in every possible way—at once, self-pitying, self-absorbed, hysterical, and seemingly unconcerned with the emotional damage she constantly inflicts on her family, friends, and professional colleagues. Of course, the literary annals are replete with unlikeable characters, so that alone is not enough to sink a book if the story is a good one. In this case, though, the tale is so implausible—starting with the fake cross-country car trip, which would have been quite easy to unravel at virtually any point—that the entire mid-life radical reinvention and sexual awakening plotline becomes altogether unconvincing. That said, this is a novel that apparently has found a readership, no matter how narrow that target demographic might be. Unfortunately, that audience does not include me. show less