All Fours is an irreverently sexy, tender, hilarious and surprising novel about a woman upending her life.
In This Spotlight On All Fours
About 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.
Praise for All Fours
“All Fours has spurred a whisper network of women fantasizing about desire and freedom…It’s the talk of every group text.”—The New York Times
“An irreverent and brilliantly touching story of a woman’s quest for freedom.”—Oprah Daily
“Atmospheric, sexy and totally unexpected.”—People Magazine
“It’s not just that Miranda July’s latest novel is so propulsive you might have to cancel plans or set aside PTO just to scarf it down. It’s that her dazzlingly horny intelligence wrestles with marriage, queerness, and desire by turns sweet and hilarious, making even the smallest pangs of desire sizzle.”—Vulture
“All Fours possessed me. I picked it up and neglected my life until the last page, and then I started begging every woman I know to read it as soon as possible…Miranda July has given women in their 40s something totally new to want, plus permission to want it.”—Emily Gould, The Cut
“All Fours cast a spell on me and was hard to emerge from.”—The Yale Review
“Showcases July’s wry observational powers about marriage, sex, aging and creative workaholism, along with her bawdy and philosophical sense of humor.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“The frankness with which the narrator delves into perimenopause and menopause is a revelation…at once hilarious and dead serious. Girls who grew up in the ’80s passing around Judy Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, now midlife women, should share All Fours for its attention to many of the same questions.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Miranda July may be one of the most interesting writers working today…All Fours announces itself as a scream and an uncontrollable laugh, shining a light on the absurdity of the left turns one takes on their way to midlife. But underneath the strangeness and irreverence rests a notable sense of vulnerability that will leave readers awe-struck of July’s daring.”—Chicago Review of Books
“I found myself reading All Fours in solitude, because as I read I’d started making sounds that were recognizably laughter but were also expulsions of heartbreak and what I’ll call a cleansing sorrow. If the United States had the good sense to name national treasures, I’d nominate Miranda July.”—Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours and Day
“A giddy, bold, mind-blowing tour de force by one of our most important literary writers.”—George Saunders, Booker-Prize winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo
“Profound and bawdy and deeply human, a brilliant work of art from a completely blown-open and fearless mind.”—Emma Cline, New York Times bestselling author of The Guest
“I genuinely believe Miranda July should be given a Pulitzer or a Nobel Prize for this novel. It is a masterpiece… All Fours is a very unhinged, potent, sexy, funny and profound book. In all seriousness, it’s liable to change your brain chemistry and/or capsize your life (in a good way).”—Dazed
“Sharply funny…All Fours focuses on the boundary lines of human connection and sexuality, in this case, while exploring the desires and creative instincts of a woman in the transitional time of middle age. July enters this territory with humor and heart, leaving readers with plenty to chew on.”—W Magazine
“A frank novel about a midlife awakening, which is funnier and more boldly human than you ever quite expect….the bravery of All Fours is nothing short of riveting.”—Vogue
About Miranda Juy, Author of All Fours
Miranda July is a writer, filmmaker, and artist. Her debut novel, The First Bad Man, was an instant New York Times bestseller, and her collection of stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You, won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Harper’s, and The New Yorker. July lives in Los Angeles, and was born in Berkeley, California.
You can connect with Miranda July on their website, and on Instagram and Substack.
Source: Publisher
Publisher: Riverhead Books Penguin/Random House
ISBN: 9780593190272
Pub Date: May 13, 2025
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