In the second novel by writer, actor and film-maker Miranda July, a nameless Los Angeles-based artist who has had success “in several mediums” leaves behind her husband, Harris, and their young child, Sam, to drive across America. She is due at a meeting in New York and has decided to get there via a leisurely road trip. But what starts off as a fleeting break from the mundanity of marriage and motherhood turns into a wild and wonderfully odd unravelling. Just half an hour into her journey, she impulsively leaves the freeway and checks into a scruffy motel. There she is electrified by a younger car hire worker who has “a Huckleberry Finn/Gilbert Blythe look that I used to flip out over as a teenager.” After the two lock eyes while he squeegees her windscreen (not a euphemism), she decides to pursue him in an unusually chaste love affair.
All Fours – which has been shortlisted for this year’s Women’s Prize for fiction – is narrated by July whose pacy, hypnotic reading skilfully evokes the internal monologue of her protagonist, who pinballs between drily funny and existentially bereft. The book has been called a menopause novel on the basis that it centres on a 45-year-old dismayed at being halfway through her life and past her peak (both her grandmother and aunt killed themselves and she worries she is next in line). But there’s more than just dwindling oestrogen in this frank and subversive tale which reflects on desire, freedom and creativity, and shines a light on the complex inner life of a woman.
• Available via Canongate, 10hr 13min
Further listening
Maternity Service
Emma Barnett, Penguin Audio, 1hr 50min
The Today presenter narrates her manifesto for rethinking women’s maternity leave based on her own experiences on motherhood’s “frontline”.
Character Limit
Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, Penguin Audio, 15hr 20min
This blistering behind-the-scenes account of Elon Musk’s catastrophic Twitter takeover is read by Edoardo Ballerini.
