Book Review: All Fours by Miranda July. Reviewed by Lisa Ellex
"To quench that thirst she drives, soon finding a motel room where the reader becomes a peeping Tom, perversely observing sacred moments through a keyhole."
A well-planned cross-country drive, the trauma of childbirth, the torture of secret desire, the struggle of monogamy, the ebb and flow of creativity, an alternative lifestyle, art, life, suicide, a breathless baby, deception, dance, FBI, PTSD, IG, intrigue, longing, an Asian sleuth, passion, purpose, friendship, lesbians, a neglected dog, the threshold of menopause, role-playing, rejection, shame, interior design, tonka bean soap, infidelity, kundalini, fame, a husband‘s girlfriend, a giant spoon, work, separate bedrooms, seedy motel rooms, a reservation at The Carlyle, a father lost in the “death field”, a room of one’s own, celebrity, and so much more.
No, this is not a fever dream but just some of the elements of writer/filmmaker/performance artist Miranda July’s second novel, All Fours, a brave and often painful hero’s journey to find their true self in midlife. When the nameless protagonist – a successful artist, modern wife, devoted mother (refusing to impose gender, she refers to her 7-year-old son as “they,” “them,” or “their”), and self-described “minor celebrity” – leaves her home and family to embark on a solo cross-country drive, her excursion turns into a modern day Alice in Wonderland (with a lot more kink). Like a lone caterpillar, she is changing, literally designing her own cocoon in which to begin her wild transformation.
A half century after Erica Jong’s 1973 ground-breaking novel, Fear of Flying, (described as a “timeless tale of self-discovery, liberation, and womanhood”) in which the protagonist sets out on a journey for the “zipless fuck,” Miranda July’s protagonist boldly debunks all notions of female sexuality and pursues her own psycho-sexual journey taking the reader along for the ride. From the very first page when a neighbor notices a tele-photographer peering into the protagonist's front window, we become the person behind that phallic lens, capturing all the personal and candid moments that would forever live in the photo album of one’s mind (like the weekly sex she initiates with her husband while fantasizing various scenarios from which he is absent). Of the relationship with him she offers: “Harris and I are more formal, like two diplomats who aren’t sure if the other one has poisoned our drink. Forever thirsty, but forever wanting the other, one to take the first sip.”
To quench that thirst she drives, soon finding a motel room where the reader becomes a peeping Tom, perversely observing sacred moments through a keyhole. Though she shares these moments with fantastically fleshed-out characters like Audra, Helen, Claire, and Arkanda, it is her chance meeting with Davey, a smitten fan, that changes her course and upends her. And so, unraveled and 3,000 miles away from where her family believes her to be, she waits for stolen moments with a young, married fan she cannot have, at least, not in a way the reader imagines.
As Jong’s main character fears “flying,” July’s main character fears falling; off a cliff (notice the book’s cover art), off a balcony (the fate of her grandmother and aunt), off a hormonal chart (as her body betrays her with perimenopause), off the planet. Creative types will tell you it’s the process of creating that keeps them alive and ensures purpose and immortality. To not create is to die. But here, the protagonist is so tormented by her longing that she is unable to create and, intentionally or not, she creates an overall chaos in her life. If there is any truth to the Chaos Theory, will order be far behind?
In her work as a filmmaker, Miranda July masterfully creates stark and uncomfortable realities for her characters and she successfully transfers that talent here, delivering her nameless literary hero with the purity of a raw-nerve newborn, courageously crawling toward their truth.
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