In 'All Fours,' Miranda July tackles love, sex and reinvention in middle age

NPR's Book of the Day

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Arts, Books

4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2024

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

Writer and filmmaker Miranda July says the popular imagination sort of drops off once a woman gets married and has kids. Her new novel All Fours turns that on its head – it's a story about an artist in her 40s who departs from her husband and child on a road trip that takes her to some very unexpected places. In today's episode, July speaks to NPR's Brittany Luse about the interviews she conducted with women going through perimenopause and menopause for this book, and the whisper network with her friends that fueled her protagonist's deep desire for something new.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Before we get into today's show,
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0:33.8	You can find out more at plus.npr.org slash book of the day. All right, on to today's show.
0:39.6	Here's how Miranda July describes the main character of her book, All Fours.
0:44.1	She's 45. She decides to go on a kind of vision quest road trip driving from L.A. to New York.
0:52.7	Says goodbye to her husband and child, sets out and stops about
0:57.7	20 minutes from her house and checks into a motel and spends the three weeks that she's
1:06.9	supposed to be in New York there. And when she goes home from this supposed road trip,
1:12.8	she doesn't fit back into her life in the same way. Sex, desire, aging, and domesticity are the
1:19.9	things she's examining with this book. She did this interview with NPR's Brittany Luz from It's
1:24.2	Been a Minute, and they got to talking about perimenopause and romance and
1:28.2	biology, and Miranda July says, every love story is a hormone story. And so what does love look like
1:35.4	when your hormones are in transition? Find out after the break. In the U.S., national security
1:42.1	news can feel far away from daily life.
1:44.9	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.
1:49.4	On our new show, Sources and Methods.
	...

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