Reviews and Comments

Until now, I have stayed away from Miranda July's work because of her public persona. I didn't think her art would be for me, produced by this twee, quirky LA artiste.

But boy has All Fours proved me wrong. Maybe it's because I am a woman in a similar stage of life as Miranda's protagonist, who lived through or is about to live through some of the things she describes.

Without providing too many spoilers, this is a book about Gen X and Millenial women who are starting to deal with the implications of perimenopause on their bodies, and in turn, their identities as sexual beings.

To put it bluntly, we don't look old (thanks to sunscreens and a regular pilates practice) younger people still find us fuckable, but our hormones are waiting to betray our libido at every turn.

This book is so hyped, which is probably why this review is a little bit unfair.

If you've managed to avoid the hype it goes like this: really compelling fantasy series, with tons of hot smutty sex scenes.

So first, to address the latter. There are a couple of sex scenes. As in... two. They are both in the last third of the book. The rest of the book is filled with the kind of yearning a 7th grader might write about in her diary (drooling over a crush's muscular abs, or his thick hair). They are not the stuff of adult desire. At least, not from my perspective. And that's what's missing, even from the sex scenes for me: desire. I was not exactly carried away on the wings of fantasy reading them. I saw another review that said "these sex scenes were so explicit". Were they?! I'm worried about that person's sex life now. They were explicit, and they were graphic, but they described pretty vanilla hetero sex? and I'm not super kinky, and I like smut as much as the next person, but this was not compelling smut for me.

But here's the thing! I think, were it not for the awkward attempt at smut, this would have been a half-way decent fantasy book. Clearly, it borrows a lot of plot and universe building from other IP (Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Hunger Games). Still, it creates a mostly compelling narrative on its own (even though I guessed at every plot twist in the book since the author does some very obvious breadcrumbling). But the sex almost detracts from it: it feels completely unnecessary.

So... I will not be reading the sequels, is what I'm trying to say, unless I'm looking for something to occupy a weekend when otherwise very depressed.