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BBC News
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
'Some loved it and some tore it apart': How the erotic novel All Fours captured the zeitgeist
"Life-changing" for some, hateable to others, Miranda July's wildly successful erotic novel All Fours about the female midlife experience has dominated the conversation. 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." More like this:• The 12 best books of 2025 so far• Clinton: 'I was more a storyline than a story'• The lost 1934 novel warning of Nazi horrors 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. -- For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Boston Globe
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
David Horowitz, combative right-wing activist and author, dies at 86
A Queens-bred son of communist teachers, Mr. Horowitz grew from a red diaper baby into a committed Marxist, attending his first march at age 9 and becoming a top editor at Ramparts magazine, a voice of the 1960s and '70s New Left. Advertisement He gradually became disillusioned by the movement and, in a break from politics, partnered with his friend Peter Collier to write books about powerful American families, including well-received portraits of the Kennedys, the Roosevelts, and the Ford auto-making family. Their first collaboration, 'The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty' (1976), was a finalist for the National Book Awards. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Beginning in 1985, when the duo co-wrote a Washington Post Magazine article titled 'Lefties for Reagan,' they also drew attention for their turn toward conservatism. The Los Angeles Times likened them to 'lumberjacks on a two-man saw, enthusiastically cutting through a forest of former beliefs.' Mr. Horowitz and Collier explained they had decided to vote for President Ronald Reagan out of frustration with the left's 'anti-Americanism' and 'casual indulgence of Soviet totalitarianism,' among other issues. Advertisement 'Looking back on the left's revolutionary enthusiasms of the last 25 years, we have painfully learned what should have been obvious all along: that we live in an imperfect world that is bettered only with great difficulty and easily made worse - much worse,' they wrote. 'This is a conservative assessment, but on the basis of half a lifetime's experience, it seems about right.' Although he continued to write biographies with Collier, Mr. Horowitz shifted his focus back to politics, reinventing himself as a conservative commentator and provocateur. He spoke at college campuses, wrote dozens of books (including the 2017 bestseller 'Big Agenda: President Trump's Plan to Save America') and appeared frequently on television, particularly on Fox News, where he denounced President Obama as 'an evil man' who was 'destroying our borders.' Long before the Trump administration began seeking more federal control of universities, he helped lay the groundwork for the White House's efforts, arguing in books such as 'Indoctrination U' (2007) that America's universities had become incubators for left-wing politics and had abandoned the principle of academic freedom. Mr. Horowitz influenced conservative activists and political advisers such as Charlie Kirk, who called him 'a titan in the battle of ideas and a warrior for Western civilization,' and Stephen Miller, the Trump White House deputy chief of staff for policy, who credited him with inspiring 'generations of bold conservative leaders.' Miller first sought out Mr. Horowitz for advice as a teenager in Santa Monica, while trying to persuade high school administrators to direct daily recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance. Mr. Horowitz later helped him get a job in the office of Senator Jeff Sessions, the Alabama Republican who served as attorney general during Donald Trump's first term. Advertisement Outside of right-wing circles, Mr. Horowitz was harshly criticized, including for describing Black Lives Matter as 'a violent racist organization' and equating Palestinians to 'Nazis.' The Southern Poverty Law Center called him 'a driving force of the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-black movements,' citing his direction of the Freedom Center, which began in 1988 as the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. The center has denounced climate science, illegal immigration, and the spread of Islam, organizing a 2007 event called 'Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week' that was billed as a campaign to call out 'the oppression of women in Islam.' Its gatherings drew future Trump officials and advisers including Sessions and Stephen K. Bannon. Discussing the group in a 2017 interview with the Post, Mr. Horowitz cast the center as a key defender of 'traditional American values' and as a counterweight to rival groups spending money on behalf of the left. 'People would refer to my Freedom Center as a 'think tank,'' he wrote in a 2017 article for Breitbart News, 'and I would correct them, 'No, it's a battle tank,' because that is what I felt was missing most in the conservative cause - troops ready and willing to fight fire with fire.' One of two children, David Joel Horowitz was born in Queens on Jan. 10, 1939. He studied English at Columbia University, receiving a bachelor's degree in 1959, and married Elissa Krauthammer that same year. Mr. Horowitz earned a master's degree in English from the University of California Berkeley in 1961, and the next year he published his first book, 'Student,' a report on the political activism taking place on campus. Advertisement His political advocacy took him to London, where he worked for the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and befriended the Polish Marxist writer Isaac Deutscher, whose biography he published in 1971, a few years after returning to Berkeley and joining the staff of Ramparts. 'The system cannot be revitalized; it must be overthrown,' the magazine declared in a 1970 editorial. 'As humanely as possible, but by any means necessary.' (Mr. Horowitz later told The New York Times that he was the one who pushed for the 'humanely' part.) At Ramparts, Mr. Horowitz worked closely with Collier, a fellow editor who had also been a graduate student at Berkeley. He also got to know Huey Newton, the founder of the Black Panther Party, which was heavily featured in the publication. Mr. Horowitz helped the Panthers raise money to finance a school for poor children in Oakland. Mr. Horowitz (right) of Ramparts magazine answered questions at a news conference in Berkeley, Calif., in 1972. He appeared along with editor Peter Collier (third from right) and Perry Fellwock (second from right) of San Diego. Fellwock, an antiwar activist, was credited by the magazine as the source for an article on National Security Agency intelligence-gathering. Sal Veder/Associated Press But he grew disillusioned with the organization, and with left-wing politics more broadly, after the death of his friend Betty Van Patter, a white woman whom he had introduced to the Panthers. While working for the group as a bookkeeper, she disappeared in late 1974. Weeks later, her body was found in San Francisco Bay, badly beaten. Although no one was charged with her killing, Mr. Horowitz was convinced the Panthers were responsible. 'Everything I had believed in and worked for, every effort to ally myself with what was virtuous and right, had ultimately led to my involvement with the Panthers, and the invitation to Betty to take the job that killed her,' he wrote in a 1997 memoir, 'Radical Son.' Advertisement By his own acknowledgment, her death sent him into a tailspin. He bought a Datsun sports car; was nearly killed when it was struck by a train, according to The New York Times; and divorced his wife after nearly two decades of marriage. Writing, especially in partnership with Collier, seemed to bring stability. Together they produced books including 'The Kennedys: An American Drama' (1984), a four-generation history that charted the rise of patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and the successes and disappointments of his descendants. 'Collier and Horowitz have blended historical research and journalism brilliantly,' Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward wrote in a review. 'The information they have gathered will always be an important part of the record, although their particular vision of the Kennedys as doomed family will likely die with other Kennedy myths. They see the Kennedy history as a story of alliances and dreams - in their view, the wrong alliances and the wrong dreams. Where the individual family members succeeded, the authors see money, manipulation and insincerity. Where the family failed, Collier and Horowitz see payment for the successes.' Mr. Horowitz's marriages to Sam Moorman and Shay Marlowe ended in divorce. In 1998, he married April Mullvain. Complete information on survivors was not immediately available. Mr. Horowitz had a stepson, John, and four children from his first marriage: Jonathan Daniel, Ben, Anne and Sarah Horowitz, who was born with Turner syndrome, a chromosomal condition, and died in 2008 at the age of 44. He wrote about her legacy in a 2009 book, 'A Cracking of the Heart.' Describing his political views, Mr. Horowitz said he was more moderate than his critics made him out to be, writing in a 2002 essay for Salon that he was 'a defender of gays and 'alternative lifestyles,' a moderate on abortion, and a civil rights activist.' Advertisement But he was unabashed about his combative style and, to the dismay of some conservatives, his defense of Trump, whom he falsely claimed had won the 2020 election. 'If you're nuanced and you speak in what I would call an intellectual manner, you get eaten alive,' Mr. Horowitz told the Times in 2017. 'It's a great handicap to be talking like accountants while the opposition are making moral indictments.'
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Exeter Library on shortlist to be crowned South West's best
Exeter Library has been shortlisted as the Best Library in the South West in the final of the British Book Awards 2025. The library will be up against Bideford Library and Braunton Library for the award. The regional and country winners of the Library of the Year award will be announced on Wednesday March 12, whilst the overall winner will be revealed during The British Book Awards ceremony at Grosvenor House London on Monday May 12. The National Book Awards aim to recognise libraries for their ingenuity in the face of increasing pressures. The British Book Awards 2025 Library of the Year Award, sponsored by publisher DK and run in association with the Reading Agency, celebrates libraries that serve their readers and implement initiatives which reach deep into communities, improving the lives of individuals through storytelling and literature. Philip Jones, editor of The Bookseller and chair of the judges for The British Book Awards, said: 'I am absolutely delighted by the number, strength and depth of the entries in the first year we have taken a regional approach to The Library of the Year award. "These are libraries busting a gut to put reading at the heart of what they do, and, as a consequence, improve the lives of their patrons. Focused on local people in everyday locations, highlighting the innovative work done in 2024 is vital and a real pleasure.' Karen Napier MBE, and CEO The Reading Agency said: 'The exceptional entries to this year's Library of the Year award demonstrate the vital role that public libraries play in our communities. "What particularly stands out is how these libraries have become true community hubs by working so collaboratively with local partners. "These finalists represent the very best of what modern libraries can achieve, proving that libraries remain essential, dynamic spaces of learning, creativity, and community engagement, with reading at their heart.'
Express Tribune
17-02-2025
- Politics
- Express Tribune
The value of other perspective
In November 2024, the US National Book Award winners were announced. The National Book Awards are one of the most prestigious book awards in the US and the programme dates back to the 1930s. The winner in the non-fiction category last year was a book by Jason De Leon, an anthropology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Titled Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling, the book is built on years of research and field work in central America by the author to understand the lives, hopes, aspirations and pain of those who are forced to flee their home and seek asylum in the US, as well as those who make this journey possible. It is a complex portrait of human smuggling, and the lives of those who are part of it. While beautifully written, it nonetheless asks difficult questions about freedom, policy, law enforcement, cruelty and corruption at all levels. In its citation the award committee said "this profoundly political book holds the US to account for its cruelty, without getting lost in the bizarre American politics of border walls." Jason De León compassionately illuminates a world of limited choices, when young men are conscripted into gangs and violence, a life of constant vigilance and early death, but most of all, a life not of the smugglers' own choosing. As the topic of migration and human smuggling becomes even more politicised, understanding the human toll and the difficult choices people make is even more important today than it was a month ago. But there is bigger issue here: in a world where we put people in neat buckets of those "with us" and those "against us" - or labels of patriots and rebels - should we not question our own assumptions? Should we not think about the choices people make and the forces that shape those choices? Should we not wonder what would we do if we were to be in the same situation? Closer to home celebrated Indian author Arundhati Roy wrote about her own interactions with Naxalites (sometimes also called Maoist insurgents) in her 2011 book, Walking with the Comrades. This book, like Jason's, focuses on the individuals, not just on the political part of the story. It focuses on a group that is viewed as insurgents and anti-state rebels by the Indian government. The author dispels many myths about who the people are, and why they think the way they do. She finds many ideas and practices of the movement deeply problematic, but she is also empathetic about human suffering, pain, frustration and marginalisation. The narrative is rich, honest and beautiful. At a meeting with some students in January, I learned that there are courses at universities in Pakistan that use Roy's text. I was really pleased (or perhaps surprised) to hear that, but also troubled that no such text critical of our own policies is ever part of the curriculum. I went to bookstores in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad, both in affluent areas and in old markets, and met with booksellers and those who were casually browsing, but there was rarely anything on the shelves that would humanise those who we demonise. The lived experience of those who we are quick to label, or otherise, was not to be found. Perhaps those books have not been written. Perhaps they have been written but not published. The point here is not to agree with Jason De Leon or Arundhati Roy (and I am quite certain that they do not expect the readers to not disagree on some premise, point or argument), but to push ourselves to understand others. To allow for alternative perspectives, in books, op-eds, poetry and prose, is not a sign of weakness, but one of strength. In a hyper-polarised world, we should remember that putting people and their lives in pre-defined bins only creates sharp edges, not an integrated society.
