'Some loved it and some tore it apart': How the erotic novel All Fours captured the zeitgeist
Every year brings its share of buzzy books: the tomes that top TBR piles, pop up all over social media and are mentioned in countless best-of lists. But it's a rare novel that not only transcends the literary world to dominate the wider cultural conversation, but is still making waves a year after it was first published.
That's the case with Miranda July's All Fours, a strange, sexy and surprising book about a woman tearing up her life in her mid-40s. When it came out last spring, it swiftly became a word-of-mouth sensation, and since then the buzz has only become louder. July has appeared on the cover of weekend supplements and been interviewed on national news programmes. TIME magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people of 2025. Meanwhile the book has been optioned for a TV series and nominated for several prizes, including the National Book Awards and the Women's Prize for Fiction.
Yet arguably the novel's biggest impact has been the conversations it has started. Women, especially, have pressed the book eagerly into the hands of friends, sisters, mothers, strangers, urging them to read it. Many have called it life-changing. Some have hated it. But everyone who reads this book has something to say about it.
In the novel, an unnamed narrator – a 45-year-old semi-famous artist (like July herself) and married mother of one – sets off on a cross-country road trip from Los Angeles to New York, a gift to herself after a whiskey company pays $20,000 to use one of her phrases in an advert. She hopes the trip will turn her into "the sort of chill, grounded woman I'd always wanted to be". Except she doesn't make it to Manhattan. She barely makes it out of LA, pulling off the motorway for petrol in a town called Monrovia. There, an encounter with a younger man, Davey, leads her to check into a motel for the night, where she winds up spending the next three weeks (and blows her entire windfall on renovating the motel room in the style of a Parisian hotel).
Her geographical journey is swapped for an emotional one. An all-consuming desire for Davey kickstarts not just a sexual reawakening but a complete reassessment of her life at its midway point. Back home, her doctor tells her she's in perimenopause, the transitional phase before menopause where fluctuating hormone levels can cause a host of physical and emotional changes. When she learns that, according to biology, her libido is about to "fall off a cliff", it propels her to ferociously pursue her desires, realising she must choose between "a life spent longing vs a life that was continually surprising".
Besides desire, the narrator and the book consider subjects like ageing, ambition, creativity, mortality, motherhood and marriage, all the time questioning the expected path for women in the second half of their lives. If it sounds serious, it is - but it's funny, too.
Tackling female experiences with honesty
On its release, All Fours received largely rave reviews. The New York Times called it "the first great perimenopause novel". New York Magazine said it was "a spectacularly horny story about pursuing sexual and creative freedom". The Washington Post's review was prophetic, saying: "something about All Fours – its outrageous sexuality, its quirky humour, its earnest search for change – could, who knows, rally a generation of women."
On her motivation for writing for book, July talked about the lack of art dedicated to this phase of life. "If men had this huge change, it would be considered monumental! There would be rituals. There'd be holidays. There'd be rights and religions," she told the Guardian.
Treena Orchard, author and associate professor at the School of Health Studies at Canada's Western University recently presented a paper on All Fours at the Contemporary Women's Writing Association conference in the UK. She thinks July's novel is groundbreaking in its approach.
"She's pushing back against the heteronormative frames that seem to seep into every aspect of our lives and tell us how we should and should not behave," Orchard tells the BBC. "She's helping create mythology and meaning by designating this phase of life as a culturally important rite of passage. That is political, and that is radical to me."
To write the book, July interviewed gynaecologists, naturopaths and friends. Hers is not the first novel to explore perimenopause. Recent years have seen more fiction probing this period of life, including Catherine Newman's Sandwich, Fran Littlewood's Amazing Grace Adams and Joanne Harris's Broken Light. Nor is she the first to tackle female experiences with unflinching honesty —
France's Annie Ernaux has been breaking taboos for decades, writing frankly about subjects including illegal abortion, sex with younger men and breast cancer.
Yet none of these have captured the zeitgeist quite like All Fours, which has been likened to Erica Jong's Fear of Flying in terms of its impact. Jong's 1973 novel, about a frustrated married woman who pursues her sexual fantasies, caused a sensation on its release for its portrayal of female desire, and more than 50 years on is viewed as a classic of feminist fiction. "The timing couldn't have been more perfect," says Orchard. "She brings together multiple tendrils of things that are happening that are hot ticket items in the larger culture."
That includes menopause, age-gap relationships (see last year's Babygirl and the upcoming I Want Your Sex) and polyamory. "Then you've got this juicy, wild sex," says Orchard. Ah yes, the sex. There's a lot of it in All Fours: not only having it, but wanting it, thinking about it, anticipating it. It's an intensely erotic book, and a graphic one, with one tampon-related scene particularly notorious. July doesn't shy away from the uncomfortable, whether it's an awkward sexual encounter or a thorny conversation. She has spoken of her wish in writing the book to turn the intimate exchanges she was having with friends into a public dialogue. "I was writing with the sense that I was in conversation with a lot of other women, if not all women," she said.
By that measure, All Fours has been an unequivocal success. On July's Substack page, a community of women have gathered to share not just their love for the book, but how it has changed their lives. They talk of feeling seen, understood and liberated after reading it; that it's made them feel less alone, less crazy, braver. For some it's prompted them to end relationships, leave jobs or confront loved ones. Groups have splintered off and arranged real-life meet-ups. In Paris, Los Angeles, London, Texas, Seattle and more, women have gathered for conversations sparked by the book.
And it's not just those in July's age bracket that have connected with it - plenty of young women have, too. Mia Morongell, who is 24, read All Fours late last year. "The whole book is a meditation on womanhood that I think transcends age," she tells the BBC. What does she think makes it so radical? "Its shamelessness, its refusal to keep quiet about the things women don't often speak about, like the lives we dream of living or the freedom we crave or our deepest fears."
For Morongell the book came at exactly the right time. "It made me rethink my relationship both with my boyfriend and with sex itself, realising it was possible to claim agency over the type of intimacy I desire without shame." One line in particular, a quote from Simone de Beauvoir referenced in the book, has stayed with her: "You can't have everything you want but you can want everything you want."
Why some can't stomach All Fours
But while for many the book has been transformational, for others it's been a turn-off, leading to some fiery book club debates over its merits. "In my network of feminist friends, authors, writers, it was divisive," says Orchard.
Some critics think the book is trying a little too hard to be edgy. That was the case for Katie Krug, whose book club – a diverse mix of 15 women in New Jersey - was split down the middle on it. "Some really loved it and some tore it apart," she says. "There was little to no middle ground." Krug herself felt that July was being "provocative for provocation's sake. Maybe she felt she had to get people's attention, but it came across to me as phoney and inauthentic."
On Goodreads – where the book has an average score of 3.5 stars - the one-star reviews call it "icky", "cringey", "unrelatable" and even "a nightmarish read". One reader says: "I've had hot flashes that were better than this book."
There's been a healthy dose of outrage over the narrator's moral choices – from pursuing an affair with a younger man to (later in the book) opting for an open marriage. Her privileged domestic situation is a sticking point for some – after all, not many have the time, money or childcare to take off for a three-week road trip. And some readers just can't stomach her as a character, calling her narcissistic, immature and obnoxious.
"I don't mind unlikeable characters, but I found the narrator to be exhausting to spend time with," says Krug. "I didn't understand her, I didn't like her, and I just wanted her to stop already."
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For some, the book is just too weird. There's plenty of absurdity in both the writing and the character's choices - not least blowing $20,000 on lavishly redecorating a motel room she doesn't own. Room 321 at the Excelsior becomes the narrator's "Room of One's Own", to use Virginia Woolf's phrase: a place away from the domestic in which she experiments with her sexual and creative impulses. Later, it's a parlour, too, when she invites friends over to quiz them about the menopause and libidos.
"The motel room is a symbol," says Orchard. "The room is about her enjoying and spending her money however she pleases, and spending that money on beauty. It's a place to play. It's also a place to burn down ideas.
Though Krug didn't personally like All Fours, she appreciates the discussions it's sparked, in her book club and beyond. "So many novels deal with men at midlife, it's refreshing to see one from a female perspective receive so much attention."
Orchard resists the idea that All Fours is a midlife crisis novel, though, at least in the traditional sense. "She's actively engaging with this change. She's questioning it, she's talking to her doctor and her friends about it, she's trying to advocate for herself. In my mind, that's quite different to how we think about the midlife crisis."
Crisis or not, July has shown that there's a hunger for art which truly lays bare the transformative, messy and sometimes magical female midlife experience. One of the author's favourite quotes comes from Albert Camus: "Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth."With her novel she's opened the door for more radical emotional honesty, and with the paperback recently released, the conversations about All Fours - and the arguments - look set to continue for some time yet.
All Fours by Miranda July is out in paperback now.
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