Take a photo of a barcode or cover
carriepond 's review for:
All Fours
by Miranda July
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
From the opening pages of All Fours, we sense that the novel's narrator, an artist in her mid-forties, isn't terribly satisfied with her life. She isn't unhappy, per se, but there is a feeling of resignation that permeates the book's beginning despite her affection for her husband and young child. To prove to (herself? her husband?) that she is a certain type of person, one who can take cross-country road trips, she sets out to drive from her home in L.A. to New York City. She is not, it turns out, that type of person, and she ends up staying in a run-down motel room for the entirety of her planned trip. It is in that room-- which she extravagantly renovates the first few days of her stay, much to the proprietor's bewilderment-- that our narrator takes a different sort of journey, one that has ripple effects long after she returns home.
This book. At first, I was enjoying just spending time with this character and her strange choices (even as I willed her not to make many of them), but then the novel just kept evolving and, in the end, was so beautiful, and earnest, and open. There's so much here-- the tension between women's selfhood and desire and their roles as caretakers and partners, the myriad challenges of aging for women (both bodily and societally imposed), the mundane traumas of living in a female body (birth, menopause, etc), the joy of female friendship (Jordi, my heart, may we all have such a steadfast friend in our lives, one who sees us wholly and loves us unflinchingly), the evolution of relationships. I can see how people would not jive with this book, but I just loved the whole journey it took me on. I loved it.
This book. At first, I was enjoying just spending time with this character and her strange choices (even as I willed her not to make many of them), but then the novel just kept evolving and, in the end, was so beautiful, and earnest, and open. There's so much here-- the tension between women's selfhood and desire and their roles as caretakers and partners, the myriad challenges of aging for women (both bodily and societally imposed), the mundane traumas of living in a female body (birth, menopause, etc), the joy of female friendship (Jordi, my heart, may we all have such a steadfast friend in our lives, one who sees us wholly and loves us unflinchingly), the evolution of relationships. I can see how people would not jive with this book, but I just loved the whole journey it took me on. I loved it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Fatphobia, Sexual content