All Fours

I checked this out from the library twice (had to return it bc of the waitlist) and never made it beyond like chapter 6 because reading it made me feel SUCH secondhand embarrassment that I wanted to claw my eyes out. Which I do feel like is the intended effect and well done to Miranda July for achieving it but when I remembered that I simply did not have to finish reading this I felt SUCH relief.

Alternate title: How I Spent My Midlife Crisis

I read a review that promised this book would change my life. That's a lot to live up to. In the end it did not, but I wasn't looking for my life to be changed. After all, I've always been a driver, not a parker.

I think I'm not the target audience for this book. I enjoyed the character evolution and the dialogue with some of the more challenging relationships (especially with the husband Harris) but I generally felt like characters weren't relatable or believable. The banter is hilarious at times.

It’s a book about coming to terms with who you are and what you want at mid-life, but it’s not a novel that has much to say more than what’s in the character’s mind. There’s no over-arching message or moral or teaching, and for a book ostensibly about sex, none of it is really sexy or sensual. The first part of the book is intriguing—about re-creating space to create your own sense of place—but the book meanders after that. An interesting read, but not necessarily an entertaining one.

A woman's mid-life evolution that made me anxiously question my own hard choices. No shying away – it takes the wound, puts a finger in to dig around just to pull the dirt out and look at the pieces. Horny, annoying, instrospective and ballsy.