Sunday book pick: A queer middle-aged woman goes off track in Miranda July’s novel ‘All Fours’

“If birth was being thrown energetically up into the air, we aged as we rose. At the height of our ascent we were middle-aged and then we fell for the rest of our lives, the whole second half.”

To what extent can a woman / mother / wife afford to spiral in her middle age? Can she spare the time? Does she have the energy? What about the money to just…take off? Miranda July’s 2024 novel, All Fours, considers the delicious possibility where everything is just right and anything is possible – and all that the woman has to do is take a chance.

So when the 45-year-old narrator, a semi-famous artsy-type with an ungendered child and a practical outlook on her marriage, exits the freeway and checks into a motel no farther than 30 minutes from her home, she knows she’s about to do something she never would have imagined.

A Parker takes off

Her relationship with Harris, her husband, is like that of two warring diplomats – neither is sure if the other has poisoned their drink. Nevertheless, the marriage is a well-oiled machine and even without any real affection, there is regular sex and they have managed to be responsible parents. At a party, Harris theorises that...

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