Menopause is profoundly misunderstood and misrepresented, in part because the generations who’ve been through it aren’t, generally speaking, inclined to talk publicly about it. Only in the last decade or two have people so openly discussed infertility and miscarriages. Perhaps we can hope that once this younger generation enters perimenopause, it will no longer feel like such a mystifying hormonal event horizon. But so far, there have been few works of contemporary fiction about menopause, and even fewer that are as erotic and funny as All Fours, the first novel from artist, filmmaker and author Miranda July in nearly a decade.
July’s protagonist is an unnamed artist with intentionally clear ties to July’s own identity, and the plot is described simply enough: The artist plans to drive across the country from Los Angeles to New York City, leaving her husband and child for several weeks. Instead, she stops at a motel a mere 30 minutes from her home. Beginning with an expensive and exquisite redesign of her motel room, followed by a charged relationship with a guy who works at Hertz, she sets out on a no-holds-barred pursuit of desire, selfhood, sex and liberation.
A character arc is typically shaped by an incendiary realization, but July’s artist experiences such revelations on a weekly, if not daily, basis. She holds a misconception, she unlearns it, she reframes and continues on. This process—truly, the cyclical experience of having a curious brain—allows the artist’s mind to feel like your own. It also structures All Fours like a classic quest narrative, as new emotional and sexual adventures open up after each sequence of self-discovery.
The cover of All Fours is an image of a cliff by Albert Bierstadt, a 19th-century German American painter who’s known for his lush Western landscapes. Bierstadt’s cliff is shadowed and steep, and from the valley below bursts a golden light so intense that it washes out the trees, the clouds and anything that might be in the distance. For many women, menopause is that cliff: dangerous, distant and a bit unreal. July’s protagonist hurtles toward that cliff inelegantly and imperfectly but, as much as she possibly can, honestly—and that commitment to honesty at the expense of normalcy is what makes this book queer. The cost of the “unconventional” life she seeks is significant; look at the conversations that must be had, the choices that must be made to disrupt the status quo in favor of living truthfully. Her unmasking and remaking are incendiary, but also, look how hard she holds on to what she loves most: her family, her connections, her spark.
Because there is no end to her quest (that’d be death, the real cliff), there can be no victory, but All Fours is undeniably victorious.
