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A Novel
by Miranda July
Book Reviewed by:The New York Times bestselling author returns with an irreverently sexy, tender, hilarious and surprising novel about a woman upending her life
A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, checks into a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in an entirely different journey.
Miranda July's second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July's wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman's quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.
An unnamed 45-year-old woman who is a writer/artist of modest fame plans a solo drive to New York City from her home in Los Angeles to celebrate a career success, leaving her husband and child behind. But about 30 minutes from home she encounters a young man named Davey at a gas station and feels an intense romantic pull. July captures desperate sexual yearning and the frenzied joy of falling in love vividly and intensely — the narrator is undone by her feelings for Davey. All Fours is unique in allowing romantic and sexual satisfaction to be absolutely central to a woman's happiness — and a middle-aged woman with a family at that. There have been plenty of recent books about polyamory, and it seems at first like this is where July will straightforwardly take her story. But July doesn't take the expected path with anything, and what happens instead is more real, honest, and specific to the needs and desires of these two characters. It demonstrates that polyamory is a large umbrella for covering many different heads...continued
Full Review
(720 words)
(Reviewed by Lisa Butts).
Miranda July is an artist who works successfully in multiple mediums, perhaps equally well-known for her films and her fiction. Born in 1974 in Barre, Vermont, and raised in Berkeley, California, July dropped out of college in her early twenties and moved to Portland, Oregon, where she began exploring performance art before becoming a filmmaker.
July's first full-length movie, Me and You and Everyone We Know, for which she both starred and directed, was released in 2004 and racked up some of the most significant independent film awards, including the Caméra d'Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival and the Special Jury Prize at Sundance. The movie is a romantic dramedy about a recently separated shoe salesman living with his ...
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