Overview
A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S TOP 10 FICTION BOOKS OF 2024 ONE OF NPR'S "BOOKS WE LOVE" 2024 NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: THE NEW YORKER VOGUE FINANCIAL TIMES OPRAH DAILY VULTURE VOX The New York Times bestselling author returns with an irreverently sexy, tender, hilarious and surprising novel about a woman upending her life "A frank novel about a midlife awakening, which is funnier and more boldly human than you ever quite expect . . . nothing short of riveting ." --Vogue " All Fours has spurred a whisper network of women fantasizing about desire and freedom. . . . It's the talk of every group text." --The New York Times " All Fours possessed me. I picked it up and neglected my life until the last page, and then I started begging every woman I know to read it as soon as possible." -- The Cut A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, checks into a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in an entirely different journey. Miranda July's second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July's wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman's quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.
Professional Reviews
Praise for All Fours :
" All Fours has spurred a whisper network of women fantasizing about desire and freedom...It''s the talk of every group text."
-- The New York Times
"An irreverent and brilliantly touching story of a woman''s quest for freedom."
-- Oprah Daily
"Atmospheric, sexy and totally unexpected."
-- People Magazine
"July''s candor, her fearlessness, in describing the unwieldy emotional and biological nuances of this time of life is refreshing...reading her new novel, as a so-called woman of a certain age, I felt seen in a way that is rare. It was invigorating."
-- Wall Street Journal
"An intimate, fearless, and sexy coming-of-middle-age story . . [a] wonderfully weird adventure."
-- TIME
"It''s not just that Miranda July''s latest novel is so propulsive you might have to cancel plans or set aside PTO just to scarf it down. It''s that her dazzlingly horny intelligence wrestles with marriage, queerness, and desire by turns sweet and hilarious, making even the smallest pangs of desire sizzle."
-- Vulture
" All Fours possessed me. I picked it up and neglected my life until the last page, and then I started begging every woman I know to read it as soon as possible...Miranda July has given women in their 40s something totally new to want, plus permission to want it."
-- Emily Gould, The Cut
"Deeply funny and achingly true....Reading All Fours feels like being seen, like being caught and held, making those connections and realizing that our experiences are not so isolating ...July''s commitment to widening the space when it comes to our sexuality is joyfully radical."
-- LA Times
" All Fours cast a spell on me and was hard to emerge from."
-- The Yale Review
"Showcases July''s wry observational powers about marriage, sex, aging and creative workaholism, along with her bawdy and philosophical sense of humor."
-- San Francisco Chronicle
"With All Fours , perimenopausal readers finally have their own Portnoy''s Complaint . But even that comparison doesn''t capture the immediacy of July''s prose, its infallible timing, its palpable sense of performance."
-- Washington Post
"The frankness with which the narrator delves into perimenopause and menopause is a revelation...at once hilarious and dead serious. Girls who grew up in the ''80s passing around Judy Blume''s Are You There, God? It''s Me, Margaret , now midlife women, should share All Fours for its attention to many of the same questions."
-- Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Miranda July may be one of the most interesting writers working today... All Fours announces itself as a scream and an uncontrollable laugh, shining a light on the absurdity of the left turns one takes on their way to midlife. But underneath the strangeness and irreverence rests a notable sense of vulnerability that will leave readers awe-struck of July''s daring."-- Chicago Review of Books
"My favorite book of the summer...this funny, quirky, and emotionally transformative novel is a must-read."-- E! News
"July''s novel is hot and weird and captivating and one of the most entertaining, deranged, and moving depictions of lust and romantic mania I''ve ever read."
-- New York Magazine
"Funny, sexy and irreverent...with wry wit and curiosity about human intimacy , All Fours is about the reinvention of the sexual, romantic and domestic life of a 45-year-old female artist."
-- PureWow
"I found myself reading All Fours in solitude, because as I read I''d started making sounds that were recognizably laughter but were also expulsions of heartbreak and what I''ll call a cleansing sorrow. If the United States had the good sense to name national treasures, I''d nominate Miranda July."
-- Michael Cunningham, author of Day
"A giddy, bold, mind-blowing tour de force by one of our most important literary writers."-- George Saunders, Booker-Prize winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo
"Profound and bawdy and deeply human, a brilliant work of art from a completely blown-open and fearless mind."
-- Emma Cline, New York Times bestselling author of The Guest
"I genuinely believe Miranda July should be given a Pulitzer or a Nobel Prize for this novel. It is a masterpiece... All Fours is a very unhinged, potent, sexy, funny and profound book. In all seriousness, it''s liable to change your brain chemistry and/or capsize your life (in a good way)."
-- Dazed
"Sharply funny... All Fours focuses on the boundary lines of human connection and sexuality, in this case, while exploring the desires and creative instincts of a woman in the transitional time of middle age. July enters this territory with humor and heart, leaving readers with plenty to chew on."
-- W Magazine
"Characteristically witty, startlingly intimate. . .This tender, strange treatise on getting out from the ''prefab structures'' of a conventional life is quintessentially July."
-- Kirkus
"A brilliant, sexy, funny, ludicrously entertaining primal scream of a coming-of-middle-age story... Beyond-dazzling, eyes-wide-open fiction."-- Booklist, STARRED review
"Hilarious, sexy, and wonderfully weird... a revelation."-- Publishers Weekly, STARRED review
"There have been few works of contemporary fiction about menopause, and even fewer that are as erotic and funny... All Fours is undeniably victorious."
-- BookPage, STARRED review
"A frank novel about a midlife awakening, which is funnier and more boldly human than you ever quite expect....the bravery of All Fours is nothing short of riveting."
-- Vogue
"A sexy and sharp exploration of middle-aged sexuality and one woman''s thirst for liberation while still performing her role in a nuclear family."
-- Alta
"[July] altered my ideas of what kinds of stories were possible--something Sally Rooney and I have in common. In her second novel, July brings her singular brand of sardonic melancholia and wide-eyed wisdom to bear on this tale of a semi-famous middle-aged artist who decides to take a left turn from the left turn she had already planned."
-- Electric Literature
"This is a gut-punch of a novel, a must-read for every woman nearing or over forty, confronting the malaise of midlife, fertility, marriage, and menopause, packaged in July''s delirious style."-- LitHub
