All Fours by Miranda July Summary

All Fours by Miranda July follows a 45-year-old semifamous artist who plans to drive cross-country from LA to New York but spontaneously stops at a motel just 20 minutes from home. She renovates the hotel room and begins an intense emotional affair with a younger man named Davey, ultimately embarking on a journey of sexual reinvention and personal freedom rather than her planned road trip.

Miranda July is an acclaimed American multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and writer known for her distinctive voice and boundary-pushing work. She wrote, directed, and starred in films like "Me and You and Everyone We Know" (2005) and "Kajillionaire" (2020). Her short story collection "No One Belongs Here More Than You" won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, and her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, and The Paris Review.

All Fours is ideal for readers interested in honest portrayals of female midlife experiences, particularly women navigating their 40s, menopause, marriage, and motherhood. The novel resonates with those seeking literary fiction that explores female sexuality, creative reinvention, and the complexities of aging as a woman. Fans of character-driven narratives with sharp prose, humor, and intimate explorations of human connection will find this book compelling.

All Fours is worth reading for its brilliant, propulsive writing and fresh perspective on midlife female sexuality. The novel became a New York Times bestseller, was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2024 by both the New York Times and Time Magazine, and was a National Book Award finalist. Readers praised July's flawless prose, laugh-out-loud humor, and willingness to tell stories about middle-aged mothers as erotic protagonists that are too seldom explored in literature.

The main theme of All Fours centers on female reinvention and liberation at midlife, specifically exploring how a 45-year-old woman seeks a new kind of freedom beyond the constraints of marriage, motherhood, and societal expectations of aging women. The novel examines perimenopause, sexuality, and the urgent desire to reclaim desire itself, while questioning what it means to be a woman artist navigating creative blocks alongside domestic responsibilities.

All Fours tackles menopause and aging with raw honesty and humor, presenting what critics called "the First Great Perimenopause Novel". Miranda July examines how the narrator in her mid-forties confronts societal expectations about aging women's sexuality and desirability. The book challenges the notion that women at this life stage must accept diminished desire, instead depicting a woman actively pursuing erotic and emotional fulfillment while navigating the physical and psychological changes of perimenopause.

The affair in All Fours between the narrator and Davey, a younger married man, is primarily emotional and psychological rather than purely physical. Described as "an elaborate Victorian game" by the narrator, their relationship is nuanced, tender, and intensely charged without following conventional affair patterns. The connection explores desire, fantasy, and emotional intimacy in unexpected ways, with both parties invested in the dynamic rather than it being one-sided.

Miranda July's writing in All Fours is characterized by flawless, propulsive prose with perfect comic timing and "mic-drop lines scattered throughout". Her style blends humor with poignant insights, creating sentences that are emotionally layered and sharp. The narrative voice is wry, unabashedly curious about human intimacy, and unafraid to push boundaries while maintaining accessibility and wit. July writes character-driven fiction that feels both specific and universally relatable.

All Fours depicts motherhood as a force that "shoves your face right down into" the sexism of our era, contrasting with the narrator's pre-child ability to "dance across" such issues. The book explores how marriage and parenting trap the narrator in societal expectations and guilt, with her feeling "fluish with guilt about every single thing" while keeping "most of herself neatly contained off-site". Miranda July examines the tension between domestic responsibilities and personal desire with unflinching honesty.

All Fours distinguishes itself by centering a 45-year-old woman as an erotic protagonist, a perspective rarely explored in contemporary fiction. Unlike conventional midlife narratives, Miranda July's approach is irreverent, sexually explicit, and refuses to moralize about the narrator's choices. The novel embraces absurdity alongside tenderness, blending genres and tones—funny, disgusting, erotic, poignant—in ways that mirror life's refusal to "fit into a genre". This boundary-pushing authenticity makes it uniquely compelling.

While widely acclaimed, some readers noted that All Fours features a highly specific narrator in terms of class, wealth, and privilege—someone wealthy enough to "pointlessly convert a hotel room she does not own, without absolutely devastating her family's finances". The protagonist's ability to become "fabulously rich by pursuing the most esoteric forms of art" may feel disconnected from average readers' realities. However, reviewers acknowledged that July grounds the story in enough universal human experiences to bridge this gap.

All Fours is 336 pages long and written in a propulsive style that keeps readers engaged from start to finish. Multiple reviewers described staying up late to finish it in one sitting, with one noting she read until 1:30 AM despite being a "middle-aged mother" with early morning responsibilities. The character-driven narrative flows quickly despite its literary depth, making it both intellectually satisfying and compulsively readable, blending entertainment with profound explorations of female experience.