A review by chichio
All Fours by Miranda July

reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I put my hand to my mouth. Sometimes when a cock was in my mouth or pussy I touched my lips, just to feel how tautly stretched they were, how tight the fit was. This was like that, but with happiness. I knew I was smiling, but how big?

Somehow this was BOOOOOORINGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

Feel like I’ve been pranked by all of the solid five star reviews that I’ve been seeing from people that I trust on all the bookish platforms of the internet. This book gives you a pathetic, unlikeable, horny female protagonist battling with menopause and a slight disdain for motherhood and you spend the first half of the book totally into it, totally down for the messy ride and then you hit the 60% mark and you’re flipping pages upon pages just wondering when the bloody hell the book is going to end. I was bored. Bored out of my mind. The promise of this being funny was just… not met. I don’t even particularly think the prose was interesting enough to keep me going; every now and again July would drop a pretty solid one liner but that wasn’t often and it wasn’t enough for me to hail this as some amazing literary fest. There was nothing meaty to dig your teeth into; every metaphor felt very literal, very on the nose, very (drumroll, please) boring. 

Goal for the rest of year: ignore books that are very hyped because you’ll almost always be let down.