All Fours

Gabi's Review

A 2024 BOOK OF THE YEAR PICK FOR :

BBC R4 OPEN BOOK, THE OBSERVER, GQ, GRAZIA, HERO, I-D, NYLON 

Miranda July, writer, filmmaker and scriptwriter, is famous for polarising readers: they either love or hate her work.  This is likely because of the comically absurd situations in which she embeds her social conundrums and the boundaries she is always willing to push. Her new novel All Fours is no exception.

The scene is LA, where a semi-famous artist aged 45 is living less than her best life. While her husband is undoubtedly a wonderful man, she never quite feels truly herself within her marriage. Her chance for respite from peri-menopausal issues arrives with the windfall of a twenty-thousand-dollar royalty cheque, which she decides to spend on a self-indulgent trip: driving across the country to New York, staying in luxury hotels, visiting friends and attending art exhibitions.

What transpires is a hilarious but profoundly nuanced hormonal last-gasp, where the protagonist terrified of what lies ahead with her loss of libido, becomes besotted with the handsome young Hertz car rental attendant just 20 kms from her home. She checks into a motel opposite Hertz to pursue the significant looks the attendant gives her. She spends her money on a lavish redecoration of the motel room (this is July at her classic absurd); what transpires is a quirky exploration for intimacy, authenticity of self and options for mid-life and beyond.

All Fours sexual situations transcend the mere anatomical, acknowledging the role fantasy plays in sex, which makes for original musings on a subject we often feel prudish approaching.  All Fours is a hilarious, brave and revelatory mid-life story running counter to the prevailing narrative of "invisibility" and the end of sexual expression for females. Five years later when the protagonist finally makes it to New York she is a woman at peace with herself in the world. This book is original and astounding, I haven't read anything else that quite compares.

Publishers Reviews

The New York Times bestselling author of The First Bad Man returns with an irreverently sexy, tender, hilarious and literary novel about a woman upending her life.

All Fours possessed me. I picked it up and neglected my life until the last page, and then I started begging every woman I know to read it as soon as possible. The Cut