Midlife crisis novels are nothing new, but Miranda July’s “All Fours” is. Typically when you think of a midlife crisis, what comes to mind might be the frustrated husband who buys his sports car and has an affair, or the neglected wife who searches for meaning after her children are grown or visits the plastic surgeon.
“All Fours” blows those tropes to smithereens in a bold and erotic tale about an unnamed narrator, a 45-year-old perimenopausal woman, a semi-known artist (writer/content producer) who leaves her husband and nonbinary child at home to drive from California to New York for meetings and friend-gatherings.
But she stops not thirty minutes from her home, sets up in a cheap motel, and meets Davey, an employee at a rental car company who is a talented dance performer. She pays Davey’s wife twenty grand to redo one of the rooms into a luxurious den, and for the next three weeks engages in a passionate but unconsummated relationship with Davey.
Upon returning home, life is off-kilter with her husband, Harris. Although she doesn’t see Davey again, she remains obsessed with him, has a sexual awakening driven partly by her perimenopausal state, and goes on a tear of fucking and fantasizing. The sex scenes are graphic and honest, but the writing is stellar, and so July successfully navigates the challenges of writing about sex.
The overall character of the narrator is not as successful. She’s so self-absorbed (okay, she’s a writer) and everything has to be about her, but she’s interesting enough to keep the pages turning while she embarks on her self-discovery journey.
It’s a daring novel that demands the reader accept the nature of this woman—ungendered, obsessive, crazed, intense. It’s an original ride and worth taking. 4/5 stars.
