Book Review: All Fours – by Miranda July

Synopsis

A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country from Los Angeles to New York City in an effort to prove she is a “driver” not a “parker” (they were some personality types discussed at a dinner party). Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.

Book Details

Review

“All Fours” has been described as a book about menopause that is psychological and humorous fiction – I did not laugh and the interesting insights on menopause didn’t appear till half way at least.

So what was this book really about? There were lots of themes – aging, love, intimacy, marriage, commitment, sex, desire, midlife crisis? “Sounds like you’re not smoking enough weed …”, and then there was a bit about barn dances. After that I was a bit confused. Possibly too many themes?

I first started this book some months ago and really struggled through part 1 when I put it down and looked for something else to read over the holiday break – if it wasn’t for book club I may not have picked it up again. So six weeks (and about four other books) later I opened it up again, only to realise my memories were so vague that I had to start over. This time I made sure I had big chunks of time so that I could read at least several chapters in a sitting. All up it’s a 325 page book, which is pretty standard.

So the real question is what made it so boring? It’s hard to say, but here are a few guesses:

First up I had no empathy for the main character whose voice and actions are on every page – I kept thinking “what are you doing now?”, “why?”, “really, you’re renovating that?”. Was it because I disagreed with her lifestyle choices or was it because the author had made her character too vague and distant, but also a bit entitled. She, the narrator, had no name, and no job (she is semi-famous and does “projects”). She did have friends and family (all had names) and I found them way more interesting (though I could not work out the status of her Dad). Was this a device to indicate that midlife women are not seen?

I wonder if the excessive renovation of the motel room was meant to be funny – I thought she was just a bit entitled and self-serving.

Is it a comment on how we categorise people – there was a very obvious theme about not gendering her child (though she gendered everyone else’s) – but that seemed heavy handed. There were lots of art references and viewpoints on artistic people – not sure where this fits in. I think mainly its about major change and aging especially for women and how that impacts their life, love, loss, intimacy, and marriage. By this stage we did get a good view of menopause and its impact.

While there were some interesting themes here, I don’t think the novel succeeded in bringing them together into a captivating story. Basically, I ended up thinking that rich, entitled people can be really tedious.