I’ve liked everything that Miranda July has ever done, but for some reason I put off reading this. Perhaps it was the marketing blitz this got — bigger than any of her previous books, and bigger than her movies, really. Or perhaps it’s the cover design. It’s not that it looks like a Colleen Hoover book, but it certainly doesn’t look like July’s previous books:
I try to avoid reading articles about books I’m going to read, but with this one, it was impossible to not glean what the book was going to be about, so whenever I looked for something to read, my hand magically skipped this book.
I finally pulled myself together and got reading.
I don’t think July could write a boring book if she tried, but with this one, she comes pretty close. I wonder if it’s on purpose? I mean, dull books sell; you can’t argue with numbers. I don’t know the sales for this book, but Goodreads ratings can be a pretty good proxy. Her previous book has 35K ratings, and this one has 178K ratings, so whether July tried to be calculating and commercial or not, it’s a commercial success.
It seems pretty calculated. It’s about a woman who is in many details just the same as July herself, so you’ve got that roman-à-clef thing going on, which is catnip to many people. It’s July’s longest book, and people love long books. It’s about a woman who is 45 years old, which is a key demographic for people who buy books.
But this is also Miranda July, so there’s really loopy, funny stuff in here, too. It’s a really horny book, which I like. There’s funny scenes and there’s gross scenes, and sometimes they’re the same scene. I quite liked the book, but it’s just feels so damn long. There’s several scenes that go on for twenty pages where I’d go “oh, this would be a twelve second montage scene in the inevitable film adaptation”, and really — this book seems ideal for an adaptation. Perhaps it was a movie pitch first? I have no idea, but it feels like that: A movie script that’s been padded and padded and padded until you have the requisite number of pages for a best-selling novel.
But I kinda liked it anyway.
Now I wonder what people on Goodreads think about it — I know it’s got a middling rating, but I haven’t read any reviews.
Wow, the top-rated review — with 2.4K likes (!) — is a one star review. People loathe this book!
What the fuck… Oh, right… “Lit fic”… This is a reader that’s used to fan fiction or romantasy or something? How bizarre.
Second highest rated review, and it’s the same. I didn’t know this level of prissiness was a thing any more.
This, however, is more what I expected — people detest reading novels where they don’t “related” to the protagonist.
Heh heh.
To compare — the highest rated review on her previous book, The First Bad Man, is this:
So the media blitz and the kinder design was successful in selling more books, but that means that people who bought the book were unfamiliar with what kind of stuff July writes, and so they’re pissed off. You see the same phenomenon with prose poetry books — civilians buy them thinking it’s a short story collection, but then can’t make heads of tails of what they’re reading, so they get really angry. Same thing here, only milder.
I wonder what the professionals thought… Heh heh:
Compelled to read these definitely not twee-rated passages, I briefly considered filing a complaint with human resources. Then I remembered the protracted and messy sex scenes released with such fanfare into the culture by Philip Roth, Harold Brodkey, et al., and decided I was being discriminatory and prudish.
All Fours (2024) by Miranda July (buy new, buy used, 3.44 on Goodreads)
