Page 2 | All Fours by Miranda July

Catscookbook · 2024-07-13T19:19:08+00:00

Has anyone read it? I think I’m still processing my reaction.

Fraa · 15/02/2025 09:42

I guess Miranda July isn't for everyone. I love her fiction, and her film 'You and Me and Everyone we Know'.

I understand not liking the style and content of her books, but to say they are badly written just isn't true.

Santasbigredbobblehat · 28/02/2025 22:31

Started off really liking it and thought it was really clever. Halfway through I was flagging and sort of didn’t care, but I’m glad I read it, it was different for sure.

EmoCourt · 28/02/2025 23:00

Evenmoretired44 · 14/02/2025 08:23

I had such a mixed experience. Yes she was so self indulgent and part of me judged her really hard and the dancing was so embarrassing but man I identified with some of the madness of it. And the birth trauma. And the desperation. And her feelings about lifting weights, which still make me laugh weeks afterwards. And anll the different forms of intimacy that you can have with people. And the potential for art to allow us to process things that problem solving just won’t. So yes. A very weird but compelling experience.

Her Instagram is wild, and features much strange dancing.

SlightlyJaded · 28/02/2025 23:25

Cringed all the way through it. Not because I am in way prudish about sex, but because I found it all completely try hard/self indulgent navel gazing twaddle.

The sex felt... Showy Offy - 'look at me, I'm sooooo sexual'.

We did it for book club and most readers felt similar.

K2togm1 · 10/03/2025 09:55

ScoldsBridle · 23/01/2025 13:52

Sorry, I’m just resurrecting this as I’ve just read the book. I just wanted to say that I thought it was a self-indulgent piece of nonsense. Firstly, I hated the way she was so circumspect about what she did for a living - we were given hints it was artsy/creative and that she had a level of ‘celebrity’ but were never told what it was - it irked me all the way through because I couldn’t see the rationale for being so vague other than a laziness about writing about it? The way her child was portrayed and their sex never revealed led to me having to reread several sentences when she used ‘they’ instead of him or her - there were times when I thought she was writing about her child AND her husband - and it didn’t make sense.

I liked the potential of the motel room and her decorating it and existing there in an alternative life world. And some of the observations about female sexuality and desire were interesting.

But oh my God - the dancing. Cringe. His dancing. Her dancing. I kept thinking of that clip of Boyzone appearing and dancing for the first time on the Late Late Show in Ireland (it’s hilarious, look it up)

And then towards the end it turned into an Oprah-like series of revelations about speaking with her other female friends and acquaintances - ‘interviewing’ them almost. So many shocked at what happens to women during the menopause.

Maybe it’s only in the UK that the menopause is so talked about and discussed but I doubt there’s many women on MN who aren’t aware about the effects of Peri- Menopause and Menopause - who are at least aware that it’s something they should be looking into (Davina? Kirsty Wark?)

And as I closed the book after reading the last page my first, and overriding thought was, PLEASE PLEASE DON’T EVER LET ANYONE MAKE A FILM OF THIS BOOK!!

Agree, it's a totally plastic (i.e. artifitial) character, nothing she did felt real, even the sex was as un-sexy as it gets and the 'shocking' scenes such as the dog poo stoppage are completely unremarkable.

We do find the sex of the kid, he is a boy, it is hinted at first when she is thinking about taking estrogen gel, and she mentions that perhaps 'they' will need their own soon (I mean, talk about a totally superfitial understanding of the subject, who in their right mind would medicallize a feminine boy. Oh, yeah, lots of people, but still doesn't make it right and hopefully very soon it wil be seen everywhere for what it is).
And then, when she and her husband (the most unrealistic/superfitial man portrait in the world) are role-playing when making up after towards the end, he says it's her son.

Interestingly, I listened (for as long as I could) a podcast with her. It is semi-autobiagraphical, she and her husband have a relationship like tha one developed in the book, and she has a boy whom she describes as fem non-binary.

Also, even more interestingly from an ideological point of view, in the acknolegements one of the people she thanks is Ayden Olsen-Kennedy, who is the trans husband of Dr Johanna Olsen-Kennedy, director of the Centre for Transgender Health and Development Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles and recipient of the $5.7 million grant from the NIH to study the effects of early medical interventions for adolescents with gender dysphoria, which she has never published, allegedly because the results didn't support her work, and who is currently being sued by a detransitioner whom she referred to a double mastectomy at the age of 14.

Sorry to ofload all of this here, I am discussing this book with a book club to which I am quite new and am of two minds whether to open my big mouth at it. So thank you MN for letting me write this!

EmoCourt · 10/03/2025 10:01

K2togm1 · 10/03/2025 09:55

Agree, it's a totally plastic (i.e. artifitial) character, nothing she did felt real, even the sex was as un-sexy as it gets and the 'shocking' scenes such as the dog poo stoppage are completely unremarkable.

We do find the sex of the kid, he is a boy, it is hinted at first when she is thinking about taking estrogen gel, and she mentions that perhaps 'they' will need their own soon (I mean, talk about a totally superfitial understanding of the subject, who in their right mind would medicallize a feminine boy. Oh, yeah, lots of people, but still doesn't make it right and hopefully very soon it wil be seen everywhere for what it is).
And then, when she and her husband (the most unrealistic/superfitial man portrait in the world) are role-playing when making up after towards the end, he says it's her son.

Interestingly, I listened (for as long as I could) a podcast with her. It is semi-autobiagraphical, she and her husband have a relationship like tha one developed in the book, and she has a boy whom she describes as fem non-binary.

Also, even more interestingly from an ideological point of view, in the acknolegements one of the people she thanks is Ayden Olsen-Kennedy, who is the trans husband of Dr Johanna Olsen-Kennedy, director of the Centre for Transgender Health and Development Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles and recipient of the $5.7 million grant from the NIH to study the effects of early medical interventions for adolescents with gender dysphoria, which she has never published, allegedly because the results didn't support her work, and who is currently being sued by a detransitioner whom she referred to a double mastectomy at the age of 14.

Sorry to ofload all of this here, I am discussing this book with a book club to which I am quite new and am of two minds whether to open my big mouth at it. So thank you MN for letting me write this!

Show quote history

Open your mouth at the book club!

ScoldsBridle · 10/03/2025 13:49

I keep revisiting this thread when I see new comments - glad I’m not alone in my wincing

I did a bit of googling of the people she thanked at the end of the book - saw Ayden Olsen-Kennedy’s name and looked them up. Which came first I wonder, the friendship or her child’s declaration (assignment?) of a fem non-binary identity? It all seemed very self-conscious and performative - all of it.

My idea of hell would be to find myself at some sort of yoga retreat (unlikely) that had someone like July leading a dance session for menopausal women to channel their non-gendered yonis.

Appalonia · 10/03/2025 16:13

This writer is the epitome of the saying " mind so open their brain's fallen out"...

K2togm1 · 12/03/2025 14:54

ScoldsBridle · 10/03/2025 13:49

I keep revisiting this thread when I see new comments - glad I’m not alone in my wincing

I did a bit of googling of the people she thanked at the end of the book - saw Ayden Olsen-Kennedy’s name and looked them up. Which came first I wonder, the friendship or her child’s declaration (assignment?) of a fem non-binary identity? It all seemed very self-conscious and performative - all of it.

My idea of hell would be to find myself at some sort of yoga retreat (unlikely) that had someone like July leading a dance session for menopausal women to channel their non-gendered yonis.

'non gendered yonis' is got to be as performative and self couscious as it gets. Love it. It's going to be a long hard crash to many people in Los Angeles, I just really don't get it. M July even has some eye/eyesight? issues, I often think the only people who willingly medicalize healthy bodies is because they personally have no experience of pain/illness/disability, but I seem to be wrong! (again!!), particularly with eyes, there is anecdotal evidence of eyesight loss with long term artifitial estrogen in males, how can she spend 4 years writing this book and not researching the path her child is on????

OrangePerfume · 20/03/2025 17:29

ScoldsBridle · 23/01/2025 13:52

Sorry, I’m just resurrecting this as I’ve just read the book. I just wanted to say that I thought it was a self-indulgent piece of nonsense. Firstly, I hated the way she was so circumspect about what she did for a living - we were given hints it was artsy/creative and that she had a level of ‘celebrity’ but were never told what it was - it irked me all the way through because I couldn’t see the rationale for being so vague other than a laziness about writing about it? The way her child was portrayed and their sex never revealed led to me having to reread several sentences when she used ‘they’ instead of him or her - there were times when I thought she was writing about her child AND her husband - and it didn’t make sense.

I liked the potential of the motel room and her decorating it and existing there in an alternative life world. And some of the observations about female sexuality and desire were interesting.

But oh my God - the dancing. Cringe. His dancing. Her dancing. I kept thinking of that clip of Boyzone appearing and dancing for the first time on the Late Late Show in Ireland (it’s hilarious, look it up)

And then towards the end it turned into an Oprah-like series of revelations about speaking with her other female friends and acquaintances - ‘interviewing’ them almost. So many shocked at what happens to women during the menopause.

Maybe it’s only in the UK that the menopause is so talked about and discussed but I doubt there’s many women on MN who aren’t aware about the effects of Peri- Menopause and Menopause - who are at least aware that it’s something they should be looking into (Davina? Kirsty Wark?)

And as I closed the book after reading the last page my first, and overriding thought was, PLEASE PLEASE DON’T EVER LET ANYONE MAKE A FILM OF THIS BOOK!!

Completely agree with you, absolutely completely agree. You have summed it up perfectly.

@Catscookbook you say you are looking for other mid life female stories and I can highly recommend Breakdown by Cathy Sweeney, published in 2023. She is an Irish writer and the story is about a woman who just leaves home one morning.

It is a piece of literature, unlike All Fours which is a piece of...

ScoldsBridle · 21/03/2025 18:14

‘It is a piece of literature, unlike All Fours which is a piece of...’

Love it OrangePerfume! I will look into Breakdown.

RosemaryRabbit · 21/03/2025 18:31

Really glad to have found a thread about this.

Agree with a lot of what’s been said. The hotel room idea was intriguing. Alternative ways to negotiate sexuality within marriage in midlife is an interesting topic to explore. So is collecting numerous women’s experiences. The “this is the perimenopause novel that’s making women blow up their lives” tagline (I think that was the Guardian) was just hype and what really annoyed me was the portrayal of the menopause as ‘you’re going to stop being sexually attractive and that is living death’. That’s absolutely not what the peri and menopause is. How reductive and misogynistic. AND Had to completely park the they/them kid thing and ignore that element or would have chucked the book across the room and abandoned.

K2togm1 · 23/03/2025 17:25

RosemaryRabbit · 21/03/2025 18:31

Really glad to have found a thread about this.

Agree with a lot of what’s been said. The hotel room idea was intriguing. Alternative ways to negotiate sexuality within marriage in midlife is an interesting topic to explore. So is collecting numerous women’s experiences. The “this is the perimenopause novel that’s making women blow up their lives” tagline (I think that was the Guardian) was just hype and what really annoyed me was the portrayal of the menopause as ‘you’re going to stop being sexually attractive and that is living death’. That’s absolutely not what the peri and menopause is. How reductive and misogynistic. AND Had to completely park the they/them kid thing and ignore that element or would have chucked the book across the room and abandoned.

Yes agree with you so much!

Question re the 'they' kid for those annoyed about it, are you in general against 'gender ideology' or is it the gramatical confusion?
Asking because for me it's mainly the whole ideology thing but reading it in this book it also confused the hell out of me in a grammatical/contextual sense...

RosemaryRabbit · 24/03/2025 06:58

@K2togm1I particularly didn’t like the non binary child element of the novel because it felt to me that the mother was promoting and encouraging this gender identity which I really disagree with as an approach to gender questioning in children. When she is talking about HRT and says something about “my kid may well need hormone therapy of their own soon”, I thought it’s not for the parent to preempt like that and should be a decision for the kid when they are an adult far in the future. The they/ them pronouns are grammatically confusing but I think that’s deliberate sometimes to draw attention to the NB identity. I didn’t really see what the NB child element was adding to the narrative but from this thread I’ve learned it may be quite an autobiographical element from the writer’s own life.

RoyalCorgi · 13/07/2025 13:29

I've just finished this and my first thought was to look on Mumsnet to see if anyone else had disliked it as much as I did.

It was awful, wasn't it? So self-indulgent. And none of the characters were the slightest bit believable, just mouthpieces for what the author wanted to say. The Audra character and Davey's mother were particularly ridiculous.

I'm amazed that people have gone so mad for this, though one of the most enthusiastic endorsers is Zoe Williams of the Guardian, who is unfailingly wrong about everything, so I shouldn't be surprised.

ScoldsBridle · 13/07/2025 18:22

Ah a Zoe Williams endorsement? If only I’d seen that before wasting my time reading it RoyalCorgi 😂

Radiatorvalves · 13/07/2025 18:31

I really really didn’t like it. She was so unlikable and self absorbed. And I thought the motel decoration was nuts. It was like she’d asked Chat GBT to put every contemporary theme into a book with a massively American spin designed to irritate people like me. That said we had a good laugh about it at book club. 😂. Especially about the frantic masturbation. We are all ladies of a certain age and none of us are having a menopause quite like hers. 🫣

RoyalCorgi · 14/07/2025 09:26

Yes to all of that Radiatorvalves. Who stays in a motel room and pays to have it redecorated?

The non-binary seven year old annoyed me too - she even referred to the child as "they" when she was reporting the birth, which is just weird. At what point did they decide they had a non-binary baby?

FortuitousFlannel · 26/01/2026 23:31

Appalonia · 10/03/2025 16:13

This writer is the epitome of the saying " mind so open their brain's fallen out"...

I came here to see if anyone had thought this.