Miranda July’s All Fours journeys womanhood, freedom, and desire, marked by erraticism and despair. Advertised to me as chronicling a sexual jezebel’s adventures, I initially expected female empowerment solely within sex. While not far off, July’s accomplished skill and experience as a writer, artist, and woman allowed her to weave intricate layers of emotion and desire.
All Fours follows the mid-40s protagonist on her abandoned cross-country road trip in Monrovia, California, where she beds down in an ugly motel, captivated by young car-rental worker Davey. The two of them explore an intense, but unconsummated, intimacy, in the room the protagonist commissioned Davey’s wife thousands of dollars to redecorate. The novel continues her journey of self-discovery after returning home, feigning experiences of her road trip.
In a text to a friend, I labelled the protagonist “such an awful person, it’s amazing.” She does not hide her intense thoughts on sex (labelling everyone mind-rooted or body-rooted in desire), gender and sexuality binaries, and the patriarchy. While July shares some similarities surrounding marriage, divorce, and menopause with her main character, she takes umbrage with the genre ‘autofiction’, preferring to see it as ‘loaning’ her similarities to explore womanhood. The overarching theme becomes menopause, focusing on the idea of pleasure; the protagonist terrifyingly anticipates a drop-off of her sexual desire, a refreshing insight that strays far from romanticising this era for women.
It is also liberating to witness a separation within marriage in a mutual, positive sense, similar to July’s own journey, which provides an insight into the solace that can come with divorce, a hopeful expression of a growing, not ending, relationship. Additionally, the positivity regarding non-monogamy is liberatingly modern and realistic.
Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone, and all would be enthralled by July’s captivating narrative style and her character’s ridiculously strange, hilarious, journey.
Photo by Cedric Letsch on Unsplash
