All Fours By: Miranda July

A novel about a woman on the edge of everything — and what happens when she decides to drive straight off it.

Miranda July's All Fours is a blazingly original, deeply strange, and profoundly moving novel about desire, identity, and the terrifying freedom of midlife. July, the acclaimed filmmaker and author of The First Bad Man, returns with her most ambitious work yet — a book that reads like nothing else, written with the fearless intimacy that has made her one of the most distinctive voices of her generation.

The unnamed narrator, a celebrated artist in her early forties, sets off on a solo road trip from Los Angeles to New York. But she never makes it. Instead, she stops at a motel just thirty miles from home and stays — for weeks — redecorating the room, falling into an obsessive near-romance with a young man at the car rental counter, and slowly dismantling the life she thought she wanted. What follows is a reckoning with the body, with time, with marriage, with art, and with the particular madness of being a woman in the middle of her life.

Why readers can't stop talking about this book:

• July's voice is electric — funny, unsettling, and achingly honest on every page
• A fearless exploration of perimenopause, desire, and female selfhood rarely seen in literary fiction
• Structurally inventive and emotionally devastating in equal measure
• One of the most talked-about novels of 2024, praised by critics and readers worldwide
• A book that makes you feel seen in ways you didn't know you needed

To read All Fours is to feel the ground shift beneath you — in the best possible way. July has written a novel about what it means to want things, to change, and to refuse the life that was quietly assigned to you. Urgent, weird, and unforgettable.

Perfect for: fans of literary fiction, readers of Rachel Cusk and Sheila Heti, anyone navigating midlife, and those who love fiction that takes real risks.