CBR 17 BINGO: Borrow (I borrowed this book from a friend who read it for her book club)
As a woman who feels like she’s been stuck in perimenopause hell forever, my ears perk up when I hear about works that touch on this topic. So when my friend mentioned that All Fours centers on a woman in her mid-forties who is experiencing some of these challenges, I asked to borrow it. I had seen a couple of reviews here on CBR, so I knew that this novel was polarizing and had an idea what I was getting into.
The unnamed narrator of All Fours is a semi-famous artist (it’s never specified what type of art, though she states at one point that she has practiced several different artistic outlets) who sets out on a roadtrip from Southern California to New York and decides to stop for lunch in Monrovia (30 minutes from her home; I call that poor planning). On an impulse, and after spotting a young Hertz employee named Davey, she decides to rent a motel room and spend the next two and a half weeks in the room having a (mostly) non-sexual affair with him. She hires Davey’s wife, Claire, to turn the cheap motel room into a beautifully designed space where she and Davey can nestle down in the afternoons and not have sex. (If Claire knows what’s going on between her client and her husband, she never lets on.)
I’m honestly trying not to sound judgmental, here (except for the stopping for lunch 30 minutes from home part). That the narrator lies to her husband and child for two and a half weeks about being in New York is a critical part of the plot and I’m stating it as neutrally as I can.
Anyway, the motel encounter covers the first third of the novel. After the narrator returns home (still claiming to have been in New York), she can’t shake her desire to see Davey again. What was supposed to be a mid-life “fling” becomes an obsession, because the narrator has been awakened not just sexually but emotionally. In Davey, she’s found a person who accepts her fully for who she is and it brings all her doubts about her life to the forefront. Her husband Harris is a decent guy, but he doesn’t fully “see” her and their sex life has grown stale. Not only that, but she realizes that she is entering perimenopause and is shocked, SHOCKED to learn that her libido is going to drop drastically, very soon (because, she’s never read a magazine or been on the internet, I guess?). This drives her to pursue a journey of sexual discovery, this time with Harris’s knowledge and agreement.
As I said in the first paragraph, I was looking for something I could relate to, and clearly that was a mistake on my part. It’s not that I hated or even disliked the narrator. Some people would call her selfish, others would call her narcissistic; I just call her unhinged. Listen, I have a decade on this woman and at times I truly feel like I’m losing my mind. If anything, this book made me feel sane. I honestly hope younger women don’t read this book and throw themselves off a cliff rather than face menopause.
Maybe that’s unfair–nowhere does this book call itself “A woman’s guide to life after 45.” Plus, it does include a small, hopeful bit at the end where women talk about the rarely mentioned positives of menopause. But, most of the time I just didn’t know how I was supposed to react to the plot. For example, I’m 100% not ashamed of having a period, but I can honestly say there is nothing sexy about a man (or woman, for that matter) handling a used tampon. Is it supposed to be sexy, or funny, or. . .something else? Is it supposed to be shocking or gross? I kept feeling like this novel was daring me not to like it so it could accuse me of being repressed or small minded.
I want to call out a couple of things I did really like. First, there’s the narrator’s friend Jordi, who is awesome. Jordi is the best friend everyone needs–someone who will sympathize and listen to your rants no matter how much of a hot mess you are, but will also try to guide you to the healthiest course of action. Second, there’s a section towards the end of the novel where the narrator goes through a really horrible break up. It’s so brutal and raw and she is so desperate to fix it–that, finally, was something that rang true to me. Unfortunately, those things didn’t tip the scales in favor of recommending this novel (I settled on 2.5 stars).
Miranda July can write, and this book provides some good discussion points for a book club. What does it mean to be really “seen”? What do you do when you feel yourself changing in fundamental ways and you’re powerless to stop it? At one point when the narrator finds herself happily in an open marriage, she’s perplexed why her friends don’t want the same thing. So relationships all look different, and that’s okay. Good food for thought, as I said, but I didn’t particularly enjoy the 322-page journey through crazy town that was All Fours.