My mum was not wrong when she told me Miranda July’s All Fours was ‘very graphic’ and ‘shocking.’ She was kind enough to suggest that someone of my generation might not be as scandalized, but honestly? It was pretty graphic – pushing the bounds of vulgar. I guess to see where the line is between vulgar and beautiful?
And maybe someone of my generation was even more scandalized because boy does it make menopause look like A Ride I Would Rather Not Take.
So backing up: unnamed protagonist heads out on a road trip she doesn’t really want to take because she wants to prove to herself (and her husband and friends) that she is the kind of person who wants to take a road trip. She makes it half an hour outside the city before camping out in a motel for three weeks.
I have to admire her resolve to abandon any pretence with herself. She knows she’s not going to leave the motel – having fallen (in the weirdest possible way) totally in love with this random man, Davey, that she locks eyes with in a gas station parking lot. A series of further weirdness follows including a 20K redecoration of the motel room orchestrated by Davey’s wife. A scene with a tampon that will live forever etched in my mind.
And then suddenly it got pretty boring. She gets back from her road trip and is very sad about no-more Davey, and very sad about getting old and eventually dying, and being in perimenopause, and boy did I lose interest. Not that I was hooked for the vulgarity, but more for the weirdness, the out of place and timeness. And back in LA and in her regular life it was just… not as compelling. And drawn out with the angst.
Anyway, she ends up in a functional open marriage with her genderless child living on the profits of her art, so you know, really leaning in to the typical reader’s experience.
All that said there are some spectacular scenes of dancing. For those of you persuaded dancing is a spiritual activity – and I know there are plenty of you – the novel has some very moving scenes of the connection dance allows. Said by one extremely bad and energetic dancer.
Oh it does have extraordinary good writing.
Should you read it? I don’t know? Maybe? Probably so you can be hip and pretend like you weren’t floored by the scene X Y and Z – all extreme and all intense. Actually that’s a good enough reason – read it because rare to find a book that makes you feel this much, even (especially?) when that feeling is surprise, disgust, desire, lust, shock – all from reading! Books, man. They are something else.
Literary Vice 