Title:: [[All Fours]] Authors:: [[Miranda July]] Tags:: #fiction Read:: [[2025-06-16]] Instagram :: https://www.instagram.com/p/DK-F1-4uQaH/ ## Editions - Edition:: [[Riverhead]], First Edition, 14th Printing, 2024 - Original Copyright:: 2024 - Pages:: 322 ## Purchase * Bookshop.org:: https://bookshop.org/a/94437/9780593190265 ## Annotations Miranda July was 45 when she started writing All Fours, a novel about a 45 year-old woman on a perimenopausal-fueled sexual Rumspringa. I’m also 45, and in spite of some significant differences, I found myself unexpectedly drawn to July’s protagonist.  What to make of this? A lot has been written about the novel’s cultural impact on women ([@jtcbooks](https://www.instagram.com/jtcbooks/) recently described it as “changing the script on aging for women”), and I understand why. This is a novel mostly about that, but there is something here that is gender and biologically agnostic that’s worth acknowledging. July’s protagonist (an unnamed narrator) has a foil in her husband. He’s presented as calm and cool, perhaps even a bit detached and initially a little too understanding of his wife’s untethering. Both evolve as characters, and while it’s true that she is the impetus for their changing dynamics, it doesn’t seem to me that he goes along with it in order to support her. She may have forced the issue, but his transformation is of his own volition. In fact, I think it’s surprising to her how easily and seamlessly his evolution happens vis-a-vis her own.  The sexual awakening theme is of course fun, but ultimately for me a plot point and a red herring to the real reason I think these characters resonate with me. I think it’s their ages, and what’s going on in their lives in addition to gender and biology that makes this book more than a story about women and aging. I’m averse to the phrase mid-life crisis because it feels too simple and anachronistic, like something people in simpler times went through for fun (let me generalize, please). What the couple in All Fours feel, what I feel, and I think a lot of people feel, too, is more deeply rooted in uncertainties and challenges unique to our time. It’s not just the sense that everything feels a lot harder than we were lead to believe, but that there’s a systemic intractability to deal with, too. Mid-life crises are ephemeral, something to wait out. This feels different. Maybe All Fours is also a story about finding control or a sense of self when so much feels out of our control.