I recently read All Fours by Miranda July, having picked it up as it was on this year’s Women’s Prize shortlist. I went into it fairly blind and knew it had a reputation for being a little bold in places, but even so I was taken aback at times by just how frank and descriptive some of the scenes are. Not in a bad way, more in a “crikey, I was not expecting that” sort of way. Having said that, I couldn’t put it down. There was something super compelling about the way Miranda July writes that just pulled me in. I don’t know, perhaps it was because I was intrigued by those scenes!!

Before I go any further, it’s worth noting that All Fours was a Finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction and Shortlisted for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction. So it has certainly caught a lot of people’s attention.

The unnamed narrator of the story is 45 and an artist who is married to Harris. They have a child, Sid. On paper she seems settled. Family, home, a creative life, some success behind her. She is 45 (which she presents as ancient!) and specifically states that she is perimenopausal and convinced she is on the brink of fading away, which did make me raise an eyebrow. From the perspective of a 56-year-old she seemed nothing but a wee bairn.

It took me a while to realise that the narrator wasn’t named and I was struck by the significance of that. It reminded me a little of how Curley’s wife in Of Mice and Men is left unnamed because her identity is filtered entirely through the men around her. Here too, the narrator’s sense of self seems to drift in and out of visibility. She is a mother, a wife, an artist, sometimes all at once and sometimes not quite any of them. The lack of a name almost emphasises how she keeps trying on versions of herself without ever being certain which one fits.

Another thing I appreciated is that the novel seems to begin after all the “big milestones” are already done. So many stories end once the child arrives, the career is settled and the home is bought. Here, everything becomes more complicated afterwards, which feels far more realistic. This is the part of life that perhaps sometimes gets ignored in fiction.

The narrator feels creatively and emotionally stuck and when a surprise payment arrives, she decides she needs to go to New York to try to spark something inside herself again. The plan is to have time alone, see art, visit friends and hopefully feel like herself again. The planning for the trip is meticulous, not without a little mansplaining, and she sets off determined to “find” something.

One thing that struck me afterwards is how blurred the line becomes between her art and her life. There were times when it felt as though she wasn’t just living through these choices but almost performing them, as though she were experimenting with possible identities the way an artist tests materials. It leaves you wondering what is authentic discovery and what is tried on like a costume.

Anway, instead of heading across the country she gets about half an hour down the freeway, pulls off in Monrovia and checks into a cheap motel. And then she simply stays there. This whole section fascinated me. She seems to drift into a different version of her life, one where ordinary rules don’t apply. She meets Davey, a younger man, and becomes caught up in an affair that feels part romance, part distraction, part experiment in being someone else. She phones home, speaks to Harris and Sid, and feels guilty and relieved and exhilarated, sometimes all at once. It’s really hard to get your head around what is going on, and yet you are drawn to her, her need to do what she is doing and to explore the reasoning behind it.

The motel room began to feel less like a bizarre detour and more like her own strange, makeshift “room of one’s own”. Not tidy or peaceful in the slightest, but a place where she isn’t being pulled in five directions. It is somewhere she can sit with her thoughts, even if they make no sense to her. I found myself thinking that the room mattered not so much because of the décor but because it gave her a sliver of space away from the roles that usually define her.

There were definitely bits I didn’t find easy. I know the expensive decorating of the motel room is meant to mean something, but I didn’t quite get why she would spend so much money. Though the motel owner finds it helpful at the end when it becomes the luxury suite to be rented out. It is also a bolt hole for her and a place for assignations. She fusses with the décor and the arrangement and seems to treat it as some kind of artistic or emotional space. It is perhaps a limbo space where she is neither the mother nor the wife nor the artist she feels she ought to be.

I should also say the book goes far deeper into perimenopause than I expected. The narrator makes constant links between her hormones, her creativity, her desire and her sense of identity. I honestly don’t think I’ve read another novel that treats this stage of life with such frankness. Hopefully I will in the future.

The marriage is one of the most interesting parts of the book. She does not leave Harris and they do not announce an open marriage, yet after her time in the motel they both change. She steps outside the relationship and eventually he does too. She has to accept that her actions will ripple outwards and that he is allowed to have his own emotional life. Strange as it sounds, one of my favourite parts was the unlikely friendship that develops between her and the psychologist, Fiona, whom Harris becomes involved with. They see each other’s flaws and fears and they understand each other in a way I found oddly touching. It is easy to think that the other woman could in fact be the main protagonist. As women, we are all protagonists, I guess, of our own and others’ stories.

I also haven’t mentioned her friend Jordi, but their exchanges are far more charged than quiet comfort. Jordi challenges the narrator, questions her decisions and, I guess, offers a mirror to both her fears and her delusions. In the middle of everything that is going on, the conversations with Jordi stand out because they are not the straightforward, supportive female friendship you might stereotypically expect from a women’s prize shortlisted book. She challenges the narrator, questions her thinking and unsettles the easy idea that women always bolster one another. I was never quite sure whether Jordi was helping or provoking her, and that ambiguity made their dynamic interesting to read.

What stayed with me most, though, is how deeply the novel ties creativity to the body and to identity. The narrator’s fear of losing her artistic spark is tied to her fear of ageing. She becomes preoccupied with what her body is doing and what it no longer does. She worries she has run out of desire and therefore run out of something essential. The planned road trip was supposed to solve all that, but instead the answer seems to come from this messy, morally complicated, slightly surreal detour into a motel room and a life she can only briefly inhabit.

When I recommend All Fours, I do feel I need to tell people it is very explicit. I also need to say that I both loved it and also I don’t quite get it. I am definitely going to read it again. Maybe I am a bit innocent, but I imagine others might be taken aback too. Even so, I think it is fabulous far beyond the shock. It is bold and curious and thoughtful and full of strange moments that stay with you afterwards, even the ones you are not entirely sure you understand. I guess you want to understand and that is what counts.