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Hello hello I'm Brittany Loose and you're listening to It's been a minute from NPR a show about

what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. Middle age can be a touchy subject like Americans tend to get kind of doom and gloom when it comes to

aging and looking at our pop culture getting older either totally sucks or it's

just an endless dream of jokes about receding hairlines, hot flashes, and achy joints.

I'm still a few years away from middle age, but I suspect, and I hope for myself that real life middle age is better than that. I want to know where are the stories that show the transformations, the

thrill, the opportunity, and especially where are the stories about women in middle age?

Because billions of women go through it,

but I'm just not seeing it.

My next guest is here to correct that.

She's taking the journey herself and has quite a few

revelations to share. I'm talking to author and director Miranda July. You may know her

from her books, her movies, or her general artistry. Miranda's newest book, the one she's here to talk about,

is called All Fours.

And it follows the story of one unnamed woman.

She's 45, she decides to go on a kind of Vision Quest road trip driving from LA to New York,

says goodbye to her husband and child, sets out and stops about 20 minutes from her house and checks into a

motel and spends the three weeks that she's supposed to be in New York there.

And when she goes home from this supposed road trip,

she doesn't fit back into her life in the same way and the rest of the book is what to do when that happens.

With this book, Miranda's not handing out any kind of blueprint for middle age,

...