Review by chloelmills - All Fours

chloelmills 's review for:

All Fours by Miranda July

2.75

challenging dark informative tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I love Mirandi July’s wacky writing style. This book was written gorgeously, I feel maybe I’ve come at it, at a time in my life where my age feels closer to the main characters than I would like, so it unnerved me. Or maybe the point was to make the reader unnerved? I think the themes of feminism, femininity, aging, queerness, menopause, domesticity, platonic love, sex, desire and obsession blended beautifully. When you lay out the themes in a simplistic way as above (very surface level) I can see how it would overwhelm, but like all of July’s writing (imo) she manages to pull you back just before you feel like it’s too heavy handed. I don’t really know how I fully feel about this book, I think it’ll be one I come back to as I age. The only part I really hated (hence the low stars) was the very vast age gap between the young man and the women he ‘desired’ I don’t think there’s anything sexy about a person old enough to be one’s mother yearning for someone young enough to be their child.

Content Warnings