ALL FOURS, MIRANDA JULY, SHORTLISTED FOR WOMEN'S PRIZE AND CAROL SHIELD’S PRIZE

The unnamed protagonist of All Fours is a fairly well-known artist, 45 years old, living with her husband and child. Feeling increasingly detached from life; she sets off on a cross-country road trip from Los Angeles to New York—but doesn’t get very far. Instead, she abandons her original plan and checks into a motel nearby.

There, she meets Davey and his wife, and the motel becomes a kind of pause in her life—a space where she begins to reflect on aging, motherhood, intimacy, self-discovery, and the direction her life has taken. The protagonist, who is perimenopausal and in the midst of a midlife crisis, wrestles with creative stagnation and inner conflict. The road trip becomes a symbolic escape, a search for answers, and perhaps a challenge to the routines and expectations of daily life. Was she attempting to highlight the absurdities of modern existence?

She is far from a conventional woman. Her actions often veer into the bizarre—bordering on absurdity—and some moments even made me squirm while reading.

The novel boldly questions traditional roles and redefines the boundaries of intimacy and commitment.

This was a tough book to review—strange, disorienting, and unlike anything I’ve read before!