A Surreal Journey into the Heart of Female Desire and Identity
There’s something thrilling and terrifying about reaching middle age as a woman in our culture. The expectations, the invisibility, the hormonal tidal waves—it can feel like you’re standing on shifting sands, unsure of your footing. Miranda July’s newest novel, “All Fours,” dives headfirst into this murky territory with her trademark blend of humor, pathos, and gleeful weirdness.
Reading this book feels a bit like entering a fun house where all the mirrors are cracked—you catch distorted glimpses of yourself around every corner, never quite sure what’s real and what’s illusion. It’s disorienting in the best possible way, forcing you to question your assumptions about marriage, motherhood, sexuality, and what it means to be authentically yourself in a world that often wants to confine women to tidy little boxes.
A Cross-Country Trip That Never Leaves the Motel
The novel opens with our unnamed narrator, a semi-famous 45-year-old artist and mother, embarking on what’s meant to be a transformative cross-country road trip. Twenty minutes in, she abruptly exits the freeway and holes up in a nondescript motel in Monrovia, California. What follows is less a physical journey than a surreal psychological odyssey, as she tumbles down a rabbit hole of sexual obsession, creative rebirth, and identity crisis.
July’s prose crackles with an electric current of longing and possibility. Her narrator’s voice is raw, uncomfortably honest, often funny in its desperation. We’re along for the ride as she fixates on Davey, a twentysomething Hertz employee, redesigning her motel room into a fantasy love nest and concocting increasingly elaborate scenarios to justify her extended “trip.”
The Ache of Midlife Desire
At its core, “All Fours” by Miranda July is a book about desire—not just sexual desire, though there’s plenty of that, but the deeper yearning to be seen, to matter, to feel alive in your own skin. July captures the particular ache of realizing you may have missed your chance at certain experiences:
“I had been drawn to older men. You go back a generation or two and the cost of being gay is steep enough that it’s not something you toy with if you don’t have to; you just don’t remember those particular dreams. The stakes were ridiculously high, vis-à-vis their manhood—it was often in peril and the threat was real; every one of my boyfriends, even Harris, had been beat up in high school for being ‘arty.'”
There’s a palpable desperation as the narrator throws herself into preparing for an imagined sexual encounter, working out obsessively and studying lube reviews online. It would be pathetic if it weren’t so heartbreakingly relatable. Haven’t we all, at some point, longed to reinvent ourselves, to slip free of the lives we’ve carefully constructed?
The Funhouse Mirror of Female Aging
July doesn’t shy away from the physical realities of perimenopause and aging. There are matter-of-fact discussions of vaginal dryness, hormone replacement therapy, and the looming specter of diminished libido. But she also pushes back against the narrative of inevitable decline:
“If perimenopause had caused my unrest, my turmoil, and taking hormones was the solution . . . then there was no turmoil, all was well. We were singing the song together from the top now, Bibby the baby, but I kept my fingers secretly clenched around the sponge, a signal to the audience, God, anyone who might be watching. Don’t miss this claw.”
The narrator’s grappling with her changing body and desires becomes a lens through which to examine larger questions of female identity and autonomy. How much of ourselves do we sacrifice to be good wives, good mothers? What happens when we allow ourselves to want more?
A Kaleidoscope of Perspectives on Marriage and Motherhood
As in her previous work, July excels at creating characters who feel startlingly real in their contradictions and messiness. The narrator’s relationship with her husband Harris evolves in unexpected ways, moving from a place of stagnation to something more fluid and honest. Their negotiations around opening up their marriage feel refreshingly nuanced, neither vilifying nor glorifying non-monogamy.
The portrayal of motherhood is equally complex. July captures both the fierce love and the moments of resentment, the way having a child can simultaneously expand and constrict your world:
“With a baby one could no longer be cute and coy about capitalism—money was time, time was everything. We could have skipped lightly across all this by not becoming parents; it never really had to come to a head. On the other hand, sometimes it’s good when things come to a head.”
A Chorus of Female Voices
One of the novel’s strengths is the way it incorporates a diverse range of female experiences around aging, sexuality, and identity. The narrator’s conversations with friends, her therapist, and eventually pop star Arkanda create a rich tapestry of perspectives. There’s a sense of women fumbling towards new paradigms, trying to articulate desires and fears that often go unspoken.
July has a gift for finding the profound in the seemingly trivial. A discussion about a giant spoon becomes a meditation on the nature of ownership and impermanence. A late-night conversation with Arkanda about their shared experience of fetal-maternal hemorrhage during childbirth is gut-wrenching in its rawness.
Blurring the Lines Between Fantasy and Reality
As the story progresses, the boundaries between the narrator’s inner world and external reality grow increasingly porous. Is she really having an affair with Davey, or is it all elaborate fantasy? Has she actually redecorated the motel room, or is it just in her mind? July keeps us deliciously off-balance, forcing us to question everything along with the narrator.
This blurring of reality reaches its peak in a surreal dance performance near the end of the novel. It’s a moment of catharsis and transformation that feels both deeply strange and emotionally true:
“If 321 was everywhere then every day was Wednesday, and I could always be how I was in the room. Imperfect, ungendered, game, unashamed. I had everything I needed in my pockets, a full soul.”
A Worthy Follow-Up to July’s Previous Work
Fans of July’s earlier novel “The First Bad Man” and her short story collection “No One Belongs Here More Than You” will find familiar themes explored here – the loneliness of modern life, the hunger for connection, the ways we construct elaborate internal worlds to cope with reality. But “All Fours” by Miranda July feels like a more mature work, grappling with weightier questions while maintaining July’s signature whimsy and surprising tenderness.
Echoes of Other Literary Explorations of Female Desire
At times, the novel called to mind other recent works exploring female sexuality and midlife reinvention, like Ottessa Moshfegh’s “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” or Lisa Taddeo’s “Animal.” But July’s voice is wholly her own, infusing even the darkest moments with flashes of humor and a sense of possibility.
A Polarizing but Unforgettable Read
“All Fours” by Miranda July is likely to be a polarizing book. Some readers may find the narrator’s choices frustrating or the narrative too meandering. July’s style can veer towards the precious at times, and the blurring of reality occasionally feels more confusing than illuminating.
But for those willing to surrender to its dreamlike logic, “All Fours” offers a singular reading experience. It’s a book that gets under your skin, forcing you to confront your own hidden desires and fears. Days after finishing, I found myself still turning over scenes in my mind, discovering new layers of meaning.
A Mirror for Our Collective Longings
Ultimately, “All Fours” by Miranda July is a deeply human book about the messiness of desire, the terror and exhilaration of reinvention, and the ways we construct meaning in our lives. It’s a mirror held up to our collective longings, reflecting back both the beauty and the absurdity of being human.
July leaves us with a sense of hard-won hope, a reminder that it’s never too late to reimagine ourselves:
“I had everything I needed in my pockets, a full soul… The whole universe? Yes, everything was the room; you could not step outside of it, not even by dying.”
In a culture that often renders middle-aged women invisible, “All Fours” is a defiant celebration of female complexity, desire, and creative rebirth. It’s not always an easy read, but it’s one that will linger with you long after you turn the final page.
In Conclusion: A Bold, Messy, and Ultimately Triumphant Novel
Miranda July has crafted a novel that defies easy categorization, much like its narrator. “All Fours” is by turns funny, erotic, devastating, and profound. It’s a book that demands engagement, pushing readers to examine their own assumptions about aging, sexuality, and what it means to live an authentic life.
While it may not be for everyone, those willing to embrace its strangeness will find a rich, deeply felt exploration of female desire and identity. July reminds us that even in middle age, we contain multitudes—that reinvention is always possible, and that our hunger for connection and meaning never truly fades.
“All Fours” cements Miranda July’s place as one of our most original and daring contemporary writers. It’s a novel that takes risks, both in form and content, offering a bracingly honest portrayal of a woman coming undone and putting herself back together in entirely new ways. For readers seeking a thought-provoking, emotionally resonant, and utterly unique literary experience, “All Fours” is not to be missed.
