All Fours
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.
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What you might want to know about All Fours
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A semi-famous artist tells her family she is driving from LA to New York. Twenty miles in, she pulls into a motel and stays there for weeks, quietly rebuilding her life from the inside out.
Miranda July has said All Fours draws on her own life, particularly her experience of perimenopause and creative restlessness, while still being a novel. The protagonist shares some biographical details with July but is described as fictional.
Yes. All Fours contains explicit and unconventional sexual content as part of its themes of midlife desire, marriage, and identity. It is not a romance novel; the spice serves the literary fiction aim.
Yes. All Fours contains explicit and unconventional sexual content as part of its themes of midlife desire, marriage, and identity. It is not a romance novel; the spice serves the literary fiction aim.
All Fours was written by Miranda July, published in 2024 by Canongate Books.
All Fours is 400 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, All Fours takes most readers 6 to 9 hours to finish.
All Fours is a standalone novel by Miranda July, not part of a series.
All Fours is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
