“Drivers are able to maintain awareness and engagement even when life is boring. They don’t need applause for every little thing – they can get joy from petting a dog of hanging out with their kid and that’s enough. This kind of person can do cross-country drives… Parkers, on the other hand … need a discrete task that seems impossible, something that takes every bit of focus and for which they might receive applause. ‘Bravo’, someone might say after they fit the car into an especially tight spot. ‘Amazing’. The rest of the time they’re bored and fundamentally kind of…. disappointed. A Parker can’t drive across the country. But Parkers are good in emergencies… They like to save the day.”

So, are you a Driver or a Parker? When I read this description (it’s key in setting up the premise of Miranda July’s novel, All Fours), I initially thought that I was a Driver. But then I got to the bit about Parkers and emergencies, and realised that that was me. Also, I’m really good at parallel parking (not tooting my own horn, just a fact).

The unnamed narrator, a semi-famous artist in her mid-forties, has planned a solo visit to New York. When her husband implies (at a party) that she’s a Parker (she thought she was a Driver), the woman becomes determined to make the trip from LA to New York by car –

I imagined a vision quest-style journey involving a cave, a cliff, a crystal, maybe a labyrinth and a golden ring.

Her best friend, Jordi, says that driving across the country is ‘not so great’ but by this stage she is invested in the idea and replies –

“It’s not supposed to be! Is a silent meditation retreat ‘great’? Do people hike the Pacific Crest Trail because it’s ‘great’? And this is even higher stakes because if my mind wanders too far I’ll crash and die.”

She sets off, but thirty minutes from home, she stops for fuel and lunch (…Jordi thought that it was terrific that I was already off-schedule. “That’s the whole point! Just follow beauty!”…). She then checks into a motel, redecorates the room, and stays for the three weeks she was supposed to be on the road. Her decision is transformative.

I was free to do anything I wanted… No one to make breakfast for, no need to pack a five-part bento box lunch, no need to yell ‘Put on your shoes!’

I’m not going to say anything more about the plot – the hotel stay is wonderfully weird (with the obvious parallel to Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own) – but there are many other elements to this story, specifically around peri-menopause, mothering, grief, ageing and how we manage life transitions.

It’s fair to say that there are parts of this story that are unlikely but they are tangled with stuff that is realistic and familiar, and that’s the magic of this book.

I really enjoyed the theme of friendship. The focus is on the narrator’s relationship with Jordi, however she also relies on a broader circle of women for support, their honesty and their life experience.

I came into the house my usual way, like a thief. … Took off my shoes. Rolled my feet from heel to toe, which is how ninjas walk so silently. I was often two or three hours late because I had trouble admitting that I was planning to talk to Jordi for five hours. But how could it be any shorter, given that it was my one chance a week to be myself?

The ‘crowd sourcing’ advice from friends about menopause is genius –

“We should all get a – what’s that thing Amish teenagers get?”
“Rumspringa?” I said.
“Right, rumspringa. We should be allowed one year during peri-menopause to be free, knowing the end is coming.” She laughed at a high pitch. “It’s such a dangerous time, right before the window closes.”

I loved how much fun this book was. I laughed at so many parts, again, because they were both ridiculous but possible.

…I’d gotten a surprise check – a whiskey company had licensed a sentence I’d written years ago for a new global print campaign. It was a sentence about hand jobs but out of context it could also apply to whiskey. Twenty grand.

But I also loved July’s fragile, imperfect connections between the characters – again, these were the very real bits amongst the absurd and there were scenes, particularly been the protaganist and her husband and child that crushed me – her fear and confusion were palpable.

I can’t speak for all women, but I think that in All Fours, July has captured the turmoil, the hilarity, and the eventual freedom associated with menopause. It’s relevant and wonderful, and readers will either love it or hate it (one star reviews might come from those who like sex-free zones when they read – in fairness, the sex is a lot in this book). July has created a template – we may not actually get a room of our own, but the permission is there. I am pressing this book into the hands of every woman I know.

5/5

We were sipping milkshakes; mine strawberry, hers chocolate. Once a week we meet in her studio and eat junk food together. Usually desserts we’d eaten as kids but almost never again since we’d discovered the healing powers of whole grains and fermented foods and how sugar was basically heroin. This was part of a larger agreement to never become rigid, to maintain fluidity in diet and all things. At home I baked high-protein, date-sweetened treats. No one knew about our medicinal junk food, are you kidding? Harris and Sam would both be jealous, each in their own way. Similarly, I never told Harris what I jerked off to.