All Fours :A Novel

Miranda July’s book, All Fours is rocking my world right now. Though it’s totally different, she is explaining my feelings during my own sexual satori and journey. It’s breathtaking, exhilarating, and heartbreaking… and so many words I can’t even think of right now. Her descriptions and the way she weaves the story with the feelings so succinctly and economically… I just … Sometimes, I have to put it down for a few days so I can digest, remember, re-feel the surprise, the passion, joy, and the pain.

I thought this book was just weird. The characters were just not normal people. I like normal. Maybe that's the problem. I got pretty far, but just couldn't finish.

This book kept surprising me. It’s odd and smutty and chaotic but also so gorgeous and thought provoking. It challenges what we “know” and ultimately it’s neatly and ingeniously crafted. I’ll be thinking about this one for a long time.

The only way I can describe this book, and how I liked it - if "like" is the right word - is to compare it to an ill-fitting sweater. One that's trendy but not necessarily your style; definitely not the type of thing you'd chose to be clothed in as it's kind of itchy and uncomfortable and you can't wait to take it off, but something compels you to keep wearing it even though it's practically excruciating to be wrapped up in. No matter how much you persist in asking yourself why it's adorning you, the damn thing keeps creeping up in your daily wardrobe.That's pretty much how I felt about All Fours. The lead character is quirky and, in a way, I could relate to that. She plays things close to the cuff and keeps the reader guessing about certain things: her profession, her claim to fame, the gender neutrality of her child with the suitably neutral name Sam -- and how she and came to be so accepting of it, all while having great difficulty overcoming the trauma of their birth. She also keeps some things from her husband, Harris. Her whereabouts, for one thing. A cross-country trip becomes....well, not so cross country. She spends money frivolously. Or not - I suppose how one looks at it considering she's lived in the home she's shared with Harris for several years and has basically only contributed a purchase of spoons and more impulsively, decorative lion figurines at Goodwill. She has one friend in whom she can confide everything and this friend is very, very wise. She also coincidentally meets another woman who shares a mutual friend of sorts (very much a friend with benefits type of friend) in whom she also divulges everything....and more. She's fluid. Very fluid. She is most definitely not shy sexually. She is perimenopausal; yet her symptoms, such as they are, appear to suggest otherwise. I thought, perhaps she is suffering from late in life bipolar disorder? She can make attachments easily; too easily (but breaking them? Not so easy). And yes, that can be appealing. But also, very off-putting.So did I find this book appealing? Or off-putting? I'm not sure. That's why I gave it 3 stars.

These characters are interesting, but complex and definitely not always likable. A very cerebral read, by which I mean a lot of the action happens within the main character's mind. I enjoyed this, and found it unusual. I was anticipating a more revelatory ending than what I got, and I do wish I'd gotten it, but I suppose that wouldn't be true to the nature of mid-life.