‘I don’t read books that literally,” says Abra, 49, from Arizona. “I don’t read literature as self-help.” But we’re talking about All Fours, the second novel by the American artist and author Miranda July, which came out this year, and the way it changed her life. The New York Times called it “the first great perimenopause novel” and “the talk of every group text”, having started “a whisper network of women fantasising about desire and freedom”. This is a novel that made women blow up their lives; every book group had a friend of a friend whose life had been shaken to its foundations.
If you’ve not read the book, the plot can be summarised thus: an artist – wife to a Good Guy, mother to an under-10 – sets off on a road trip and gets distracted by a dancer. She moves into a motel room to stay near him, and remodels it in sumptuous fabrics. She can’t sleep, can’t think, definitely can’t go home, maddened with longing. The libidinous intensity of what’s later floated as a perimenopause effect is magical. I’d never seen that on a page before.
