If You Read One Book This Month: All Fours By Miranda July
Many of the reviews I’ve read about Miranda July’s new book, All Fours, have mentioned that it’s “the first great perimenopause novel,” which is exciting because women’s reproductive systems are rarely acknowledged publicly let alone in great art. And while we definitely need more writing about perimenopause and bodies and the mess and muck inside us all, July has a much more radical message: that the gift of truly being alive is about the little acts of rebellion we allow ourselves.
The whole premise of the story is that instead of taking a road trip to New York City, July’s narrator goes to a drab motel close to home and does-- nothing? anything her heart desires?-- for two weeks. It’s this deviation from the routine of being a wife and mother that unleashes a part of herself that hadn’t been allowed to flourish. She misses her kid. She misses her husband. She wonders what she’s supposed to be doing. But she also gives herself permission to see where her desire takes her without questioning it.
The first time I started reading the book I was in my doctor’s waiting room and after my exam I stopped in a cafe I’d never been to before because I couldn’t put the book down and I didn’t want to go back to my real life. The next day I climbed back into bed after dropping my daughter at school, another “adventure,” another chance to play hooky from my routine.
July shows us that predictability is the death knell for desire and desire is the engine of life. Not just sexual desire (although there’s that too) but the ravenous urge to devour everything. I finished her book wanting more, from my work, from my marriage, from motherhood, from my day to day. And that is the gift of a great book, the chance to see ourselves in a new light. The chance to see a different life is possible.
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