Is Miranda July's novel All Fours changing the conversation around sex and desire in women over 40?

All Fours, the latest novel from multidisciplinary artist Miranda July, follows an artist in her mid-40s as she navigates the breakdown of her marriage and how perimenopause is changing her relationship with her body.

It's received a lot of buzz for its discussion of sex and desire when it comes to middle-aged women — but is it as groundbreaking as the hype might lead you to believe?

Today on Commotion, culture writers Heather O'Neill and Jennifer Wilson talk to host Elamin Abdelmahmoud about why this novel is resonating so widely with readers.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Jen, this is not Miranda's first book, nor is it her first public-facing work. She's been a filmmaker. She's written short stories and other novels. How did you feel about this book?

Jennifer: I sort of feel like there was tremendous desire for there to be a book of the summer, to the extent that I wonder if this book got sort of pushed into the limelight in a way that maybe it didn't — I don't want to say "deserved" but, you know, she's not a novelist. She's an artist who wrote a novel. And I just didn't think that it stood up to close scrutiny. I didn't find the discussions of sex frank or raw; I found it quite square, to be honest.

Some of the conversation around the novel is, "Can you believe this middle-aged woman has desire and sees a younger man and wants him?" And I said, yes, absolutely…. I wanted an artist to be a bit more open, a bit less surprised by non-normative desires…. Yes, she experiences them, but she interrogates them so much that it sort of sucks a lot of the shock value out of it for me.

Elamin: Heather, when you hear that reaction that Jen had, to me that doesn't quite correspond with the way that people have reacted to the book. There's a desire to talk about desire, and this book sort of steps in and fills that hole. There's something about Miranda July's prose that feels like a confession, in a way that you want to consume more and more of it. Did you have the same reaction as Jen, or did you go in a different direction?

Heather: I thought it was interesting. One of the things that I really like that she got into is how sex for women is not — or probably anybody, really — is not entirely anatomical and it never has been, and how she deals with fantasies.

She deals with the idea that when we're physically with someone, we have all sorts of other desires in our heads in order to achieve orgasm. She kind of deals with the perversity and the strangeness and sometimes grotesqueness of women's fantasies. You know, I always say, if someone told me, "You will have all your sexual fantasies realized tomorrow," I would be terrified.

She has this terror in the book of losing her libido, which kind of preoccupies her and makes her judgments kind of obsessive. But I think what's interesting about that is it kind of shows the importance [of] libido in Miranda July's work and how she's looking at a woman's libido as something that leads them to freedom and authenticity, instead of a normative relationship.

Elamin: Jen, you're not buying into the premise that this book is saying things that haven't been said at all before. Why do you think people are having that reaction then? I've read the New York Times review and the New Yorker review, and there's sort of a halo of being brave that is put on this book that I think is worth engaging with.

Jennifer: I think that actually this book is really cowardly, I have to say.

Elamin: Oh, wow.

Jennifer: I don't think that she is really honest with herself about how terrified she is to give up a lot of the status around marriage, and that's where a lot of the shame and guilt around these sexual desires come from.

In terms of this discussion of perimenopause, perimenopause is a very broad term…. I actually find the anxiety that this novel creates around perimenopause to actually be worsening the problem. It really feels like there's so much fear and anxiety around turning 45. I find the reactions to this book quite shocking, to be frank.

But listen, I think that we use the term "women" really broadly. I think women lead very, very different lives. These conversations would not be terribly shocking amongst me and my friends. This feels like a book club pick for a party where maybe there are women who feel uncomfortable having these conversations and expressing these kinds of desires, but I just don't feel that I am part of that community. And it's really sad to me that an artist is part of that community.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

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