M July's ALL FOURS-Outside the Box Marital Perimeters

Miranda July's audacious novel ALL FOURS is a liberating manuscript meant for peri-menopausal women on the precipice of losing their libido. It can also be described as a solo female road trip that takes a salacious journey into sexual yearnings. This innovative novel covers a lot of territory spanning sexual obsessions, marital strictures, friendships, celebrity, conformity and feeling free to yourself. It's driven forward by its 45 female, unnamed narrator married to Harris, with a young child, Sam. Our narrator is a semi-famous artist whose artistry remains a mystery as does the gender of Sam whom they both take great pains to not gender label. She tells one woman who refers to her child as her son. "How dare you sex label our child." Our semi-famous heroine was en route to NYC when just outside of LA she waylaid her lust for Davy, the handsome young man who cleaned her car's windshield. No one would guess that instead of going to New York for two and a half weeks I had hidden out 30 minutes away with a boy who worked at Hertz. That would be an absurd conclusion to jump to." That isn't the only preposterous thing she does. She spends $20K on redecorating the motel room she's staying in with the wife of her boy toy obsession. And, when alone, "I just luxuriated in my beautiful room, sleeping late and anointing myself and having orgasms and listening to music and eating only the foods that appealed to me: hot dogs and puddings and orange Popsicles.. "I didn't feel guilty. I didn't tiptoe or walk on eggshells...I was happy." But, then sometimes she thought to herself, "What are you doing? You're betraying your husband. You miss your child." Part farce, part fantasy and part a stirring rumination about commitments and fulfilling one's desire. While lying in Davy's arms she tells herself, " I saw us lying like this for the rest of our lives, profoundly married to other people but always knowing we could return to our shared world. This was what I had always wanted; he was real enough to love and love me back but not so real that I couldn't desire him." ALL FOURS opens news doors, explores new marital structures and encourages self-discovery and heralds solipsism. ALL FOURS is a ferocious and manic work of fiction that embraces aging women and encourages them to be uninhibited, unencumbered and fearless. Yes, I'm being judgmental and sexist in calling ALL FOURS a tour-de-force read especially geared towards women's book groups.