Notes: First, THANK YOU—our first book discussion was absolutely wonderful and surpassed my wildest expectations. You all are fantastic readers and conversationalists! It has already made the book club experiment worth it. Your smart, thoughtful, relatable and inspiring comments already made this my favorite book club convo I’ve had. I got a bit teary, tbh! If you haven’t already, you can check out our first discussion here.
(Also: MR is NOT just book club now! You have an excellent Matriarchy Report piece arriving TOMORROW in your inbox from Allison. If you’re wondering if you have any power to change things this election year whilst keeping your sanity, Allison has some answers.)
Reminder: We are reading the book 7 chapters at a time, and this discussion covers chapters 8-14. If you’ve read ahead or finished the book, please jump in! We are trying not to give spoilers but I have a feeling many of us have jumped ahead—I have a poll below asking if you’d like to just openly discuss going forward. (For reference for today, this section ends at the point in the book where the narrator returns home, and just had the Dr. appointment where she learns that she is in perimenopause).
Let’s jump into this very hot section of the book…
Let’s discuss how female desire is depicted as the narrator becomes fully consumed with her (not fully consummated) affair with Davey, her younger lover. Did you find it refreshing that (midlife) female sexual desire was depicted shamelessly and frankly, did it feel familiar, did it make you uncomfortable, or some of all of the above? What did you think about the way that scenes of intense sexual desire in this section being cut with scenes of flashbacks to her traumatic birth experience? How much does this section mirror the experience of men with privilege pursuing desire, or does it invert it in some ways?
The end of this section is capped with her learning that she’s in perimenopause via her doctor, and becoming obsessed with the notion that her time to be desired/enjoy desire is “running out.” How did this compare to your experience of entering midlife or menopause, or if you haven’t yet, how is this similar or different from your expectations (if you have any?)
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It’s super important to me to see all kinds of sex happening for people especially into perimenopause and menopause — I feel like I’ve gotten more sexually aware, more sexually interested post-baby and now that I’m fully into menopause I have found that sex is even more interesting (I mean, not always obviously).
“ I feel like I’ve gotten more sexually aware, more sexually interested post-baby and now that I’m fully into menopause I have found that sex is even more interesting.”
Jul 19·edited Jul 19Liked by Allison Lichter, Lane Anderson
Wait. Am I really the first one to respond? Are people feeling nervous about discussing this part of the book? Having been someone once prone to the kind of obsession I think the narrator is dealing with here, so much about these chapters resonates with me.
I love how July does not make penis/vagina sex the pinnacle of intimacy -- far from it, actually. Even though the affair with Davey is never consummated in the traditional sense, I feel that what they DO DO is way more intimate. And hot, honestly. Even (especially?) the tampon scene! But I wonder if this is one part that might feel like it went too far for some folks.
Do you still feel empathy for the narrator after this intimacy with Davey? Do you think you would if they had actually had intercourse? I suspect that some readers at least would be much more judgmental if they had actually had "sex" - because that is, for so many people in the straight world (and probably the queer world too?) crossing a line that cannot be forgiven or walked back. I mean, clearly even for Davey, that is/would be crossing a line he’s not willing to cross. Probably many people would be more upset about that kind of infidelity than the shared intimacy they have?
The intensity of the narrator needing Davey to be thinking about her in a sexual way feels so authentic and compelling to me. This whole affair, really, isn’t it all just about the narrator needing to feel alive? Needing to feel like she’s still a vibrant, sexual being? And, I mean, she IS those things. But that is the role Davey plays - his whole purpose is really just to confirm her sexuality for her. Right? And in a world where we (women) are written off sexually - especially as as we age, but for other reasons too - being too fat or disabled, or becoming mothers, for instance - that kind of erasure can feel so painful. I think the narrator found/created this great opportunity to reclaim her sexuality in a really exciting way and she’s not about to just let it slip through her fingers. I may just be projecting though here because I experienced something similar around when I turned 40.
Unrelated - I want to encourage everyone to listen to the audio book if you're not already. MJ reads it herself and it's really just such a brilliant performance. (you can read along AND listen if you like that kinda thing).
Love all this, thank you Erin! It hadn't occurred to me that people might be squeamish about this section bc I'm so into it, but that's a good point!
You have so many good points here that I just love. This: "I love how July does not make penis/vagina sex the pinnacle of intimacy -- far from it, actually." Yes! I didn't quite think of it this way, but yes.
"Do you still feel empathy for the narrator after this intimacy with Davey? Do you think you would if they had actually had intercourse? " This is also SUCH a good question. I feel like probably not! I think I actually had more empathy for both of them, but esp the narrator, bc what they have feels so much more original and unique and intimate than that. I LOVE dance and it's one of my love languages and the intimacy of their dancing together and his dancing was more compelling to me than any old sex scene would be. I can see how that kind of rare and irreplicable experience would make her feel a terrible loss.
I agree with you totally that her affair with Davey is much more intimate than it would have been if they had gone ahead and just had sex. They spent so much time being with each other, gazing at each other, appreciating each other. That Davey can go home to Claire and deny having an affair is an outrage!
Agree--I found that bathroom scene to be way more intimate than any sex scene could have been. From a writing standpoint it felt totally original and new and definitely endeared me more to the characters.
I realized I didn't quite answer most of the questions Lane posed. Sorry! I guess it's probably obvious from what I did write that I found the whole aspect of how mid-life sexuality is portrayed here refreshing. Exhilarating even. I don't really remember much about the parts of flashing back to the traumatic birth. I guess those parts feel so secondary to me I think they were really just meant to help us empathize with Harris maybe? But I kept wondering and kind of wanting to see what the narrator's relationship with Harris was like in the early stages of when they met. I find it so hard to picture and I was curious about that.
Like you, I also had a hot fling with someone younger than me (albeit in my late 30's) so some of this definitely resonated with me. I wasn't married but was recently divorced, but I'm sure some of this was in play regardless: "Needing to feel like she’s still a vibrant, sexual being? And, I mean, she IS those things. But that is the role Davey plays - his whole purpose is really just to confirm her sexuality for her."
But also it was so powerful to be like, this hot guy is into me and I"m not going to resist it. Why should I?? I'm going to go for it, even if he's not the "right guy" or the "approved" guy that people expect me to be with. And why should I believe that I'm "too old" or that I'm not longer desirable because I'm not 20-something anymore, when there is this overwhelming evidence that that's not true?!
It was powerful for me to be like, "forget the taboos, I'm just going to take what I want." Life-changing!
As you know, we fell in love and now have a baby and now he plays the role of my hot young lover *and my solid partner who I experience domestic drudgery with. Which is interesting for me, esp as I read this book!
"How crazy and vain did you have to be to kill yourself when you found out that your main thrill, the thing that really got you going, was gone forever? Maybe not so crazy. If birth was being thrown energetically up into the air, we aged as we rose. At the height of our ascent we were middle-aged and then we fell for the rest of our lives, the whole second half. Falling might take just as long, but it was nothing like rising. The whole time you were rising you could not imagine what came next in your particular, unique journey; you could not see around the corner. Whereas falling ended the same way for everyone. I paced around the new carpet, remembering when my friend’s eighty-year-old dad had winked at me while I was dancing. This wasn’t a funny anomaly; this was the order of the day. In the future I might be grateful when this happened, even if the man was ninety, one hundred, one hundred twenty. A man of any age."
That line just ended me for a while. I've thought this thought pretty identically before.
"...Now, for the first time, I understood what all the fuss was about. How something beautiful could strike your heart, move you, bring you down on your knees and then, somewhat perversely, you wanted to fuck that pure, beautiful thing. Sex was a way to have it, to not just look at it but to be with it."
This one isn't as relatable for me personally but I really liked how accurate it reads?
She was killing me so much while she thought he had zero interest in her. Because I mean, I can only imagine the character is at least as attractive as the author and she can't be that lacking in self-awareness at 45. Then I remember she lives in LA so maybe it does seem that bad sometimes but I don't think so. Not for thin women anyway. Rich, thin, famous-adjacent women.
This section of the book really pulled me in. I’m really related to her obsession with needing to be desired. I’m sorry if that comes across as shallow, it’s certainly something I have been evaluating for years with my therapist! I feel like I’m just so conditioned to put all my value into my desirability. In recent years I’ve stopped getting Botox and even stopped coloring my hair because I’m so pissed about how this anti aging message is woven into every dollar I’m supposed to spend. Yet, I still wonder if I could get Davey…??!! Also, the way the two of them are intimate is much hotter than sex in my opinion. They’re constantly in that moment of before times. I was falling off my couch during the tampon scene. Not so sure about sticking her hand in his stream of pee though…
Yes, I was like, burning though the pages in this section! So hot and so well written--what a combo!
The tampon sceeeeeene!! So brilliant. I loved that it made me the teensiest bit uncomfortable and also veryyyy into it. Kinda like good sex. The like, are we gonna do this kink, and the exhiliration of doing it and loving it. The hot pee part actually felt totally right to me. I was like yes go for ittttt haha. And then the tampon was written in a way that was just uhhhh so vulnerable and intimate and so hot--so much hotter than just a dumb old regular sex scene. I was like, well, that's the part where this finally consummates! (narratively v effectively without actually consummating). Strangely very satisfying.
This is VERY relatable and every single one of us feel this to some degree whether we want to admit or not. What Jess mentions above is how we are conditioned to feel from birth and it's very frustrating that we are taught to perceive our own worth through the male/corporate gaze.
Yeah I've been digesting my comfort level on how I can comment without metaphorically getting naked on a lot of the most interesting parts of the book, it's a bit of a dilemma. But I will realize just how pervasive and internalized (to some extent) that gaze is just from random shit that happens. When my husband started with his situation I was still recovering from having our daughter so it really did my head in a bit extra. I have a lot of male friends and my need for them to reassure me that I wasn't in fact unfuckable (I wasn't fucking my friends, just asking for “unbiased ‘ opinions that obviously were very biased). But I felt like I would just die every time I had enough time to myself to think about it. Luckily I had very little time like that for almost 5 years.
Full disclosure, I am a squeamish person who rarely consumes explicitly violent or scary or sexual books/ media because I can't unsee disturbing images which alway seem to find their way into my bad dreams on dark and stormy nights. No judgement toward intimate behavior between consenting adults in real life or fiction, but, unlike Our Narrator, I don't feel like I need to know or share every excruciating detail of each encounter. So the first time through Chapters 7-14 of All Fours you can imagine me covering my eyes with my hands and peeking through my fingers to read the book, all the while silently shouting to Miranda (of course we are on a first name basis at this point) "TMI, TMI, TMI!"
But I appreciated the matter of fact delivery of the sexual encounters, no more salacious than a grocery list. "Telling her story" is how Our Narrator interprets the world and we, the readers, are firmly positioned in her POV. Her observations are clear eyed and self deprecating and occasionally hilarious but aggressively self serving. She could no more leave out the details of her sexual desires/encounters as she could stop breathing air.
She want's to be a Driver, but she wallows in the characteristics of a Parker, focusing exclusively on "a discrete task that seems impossible, something that takes every bit of focus....the rest of the time she was bored and fundamentally...disappointed."
I would have been happier for her if she was making herself happy. But she seems miserable most of the time, longing for consummation with the unattainable Davey, while distancing herself from a stand-up husband and a sweet kid.
The flash backs to her traumatic FMH birth story and references to a child hood with difficult parents lets us know that Our Narrator is a damaged person who has had a hard reconciling the pain in her past with her "normal" present. Her past trauma is compounded when she becomes consumed with regret about her lack of sexual experiences during her prime. The diagnosis of perimenopause sends her into a panic.
Am I the only one who found the flashbacks to her traumatic birth to be a foil for her affair (confronting death + wanting to feel alive?), and also a way to convey how little intimacy and closeness she felt with Harris and was therefore craving it?
This might be because I gave birth not too long ago (5 years ago), and it felt like it profoundly transformed by relationship to bodies/my body/the concept of life. it felt like my body wasn't mine anymore as a vehicle for pleasure or just in any way, and I was grappling with how to reclaim it (which I kinda see in this character but might be projecting!). And I was also just felt so much closer to the possibility of death because I was responsible for keeping a helpless creature alive 24/7. I was haunted by bad things happening to the baby and semi-consumed with vigilance to keep her safe, while also confronting the fact that I couldn't completely guarantee that. And I had a pretty non-traumatic birth experience! I remember a quote from Esther Perel, something along the lines of "the erotic is the antidote to death" and that came to mind several times for me in reading this section.
The flashbacks also open up revealing aspects of her relationship with Harris, who she wants to be intimate with but isn't. She describes how the vigil while they were waiting to see if the baby would make it was a dear time for her because she briefly felt the closeness to him that she craved. But once the baby was okay he instantly receded away again. She mentions again and again how she wants to be "known" by him and the fantasy that someday she will reveal herself to him in a way that he really sees her. But instead he just gives her the salute--a gesture made from a distance with no warmth or touch or intimacy. This might also be projecting my own divorce from a relationship where I felt lonely and not seen, but I saw her relationship with Davey as a deep craving to be seen and touched and finally having that fulfilled.
I can't answer this for you because I had a pretty traumatic birth experience (although not as bad as the narrator's) and my husband has some sort of issue with intimacy or even discussing his issue with intimacy that's led to us having, ok well it's actually just led to me having an open marriage. But there are no other similarities. My husband and I did not screw silently next to the crib. It's really amazing that I have a child with the man at all and it's not something I'm especially grateful to him for.
Our Narrator says she wants to "break through" with Harris and whimsically imagines how it happens in the future. But each time she has an actual chance in the present to get closer to him, she is the one who backs away from intimacy with him.
Likewise, after all of Our Narrator's love talk about her child from a distance, it was jolting to read that the 'do-no-harm" nanny had so little regular interaction with O.N. that she didn't realize she wasn't holed up in the garage when she called to talk to Sam.
I wondered why Miranda seemed to be going out of her way to show the reader that the narrator has a decent mate, space and time to herself apart from being a wife/mother, and still feels unseen and bereft?
I think it has to do with the way aging is the great equalizer for women, especially in a society that prioritizes superlatives; the best, the thinnest, the most beautiful, the smartest, and so on. Of all the things that are out of our control, time is the least forgiving and the least caring. The scene where our narrator finds the hormonal graph on the interwebs and shares it with Jordie is pure gold. They are gobsmacked with shock at the unfairness between the catastrophic drop off in estrogen for women after menopause and the barely noticeable decrease in testosterone for men. It sends her into a three month frenzy to beat the impending decline into the abyss, or even the "deathzone" that took its ultimate toll on her Grandmother and Aunt.
Susan I really appreciate this comment and especially reminding us of the Driver v. Parker metaphor. Our narrator is so task focused, so striving for the next hit/high, that and ultimately isn’t satisfied by any relationship. I’m a bit bothered by her relationship with Jordi, who is presented as always available, wise, loving and stoic, but about whom we know very little. She’s like the “magical lesbian” to the narrator’s straight(ish)-privileged hero. It’s interesting bc the narrator’s self-absorption around her own desires strike me as stereotypically male — constant seeking, relying on past successes (her past work or her time with Davey) to propel her actions, but then they are wrapped in a midlife female self-deprecating self-obsession. Even the turn toward perimenopause doesn’t actually go anywhere — it feeds anxiety but it doesn’t seem to stuck around in a meaningful way in the narrative. It also (might?) feed an idea that female biology makes women bananas. I think there’s some redemption in this later in the book (I just tore through it!) but I can’t help but feel like this all remains incomplete. Last thing — the descriptions of the traumatic birth experience are incredible and absolutely made me cry. Same with the suicides of her grandmother and aunt. So there’s a lot of unwellness in this book that just kind of lurks around, but so far goes…unresolved. I’m not 100% sure what I’m looking for but somehow there’s an integration that I want the narrator to achieve, and so far that’s not happening. I couldn’t put it down though.
I'm not as far along as you are (ha!) but one question I find myself asking a lot is whether she deliberately wrote some of this experience as a flipped script with a woman in the role as the famous, wealthy artist who gets to live freely and pursue their desires (including w adoring fans). Just to kind of mess w that trope and make us ask ourselves if we judge differently when it's a woman.
Very true about the flipped script! So much so that I found myself siding with Harris when they finally have their confrontation (might be further along than chapter 14) when he says she has wasted what should have been the best years of his life.
I might have said something like that to my first husband when we were getting divorced, realizing that we never were on the same page from the beginning, that my assumptions of common goals and good faith were never based in reality.
Yes, Jordie is too good to be true! She's available at all hours to listen to our narrator's exploits, never taking offense when her comments are brushed off or otherwise dismissed. If they hadn't had their weekly in person junk food meet-ups, I would have wondered if she was an AI generated bot.
Although there was a moment much earlier in the book with Jordie that seemed to launch Our Narrator into her emotional crisis. It was while they were eating ice cream in Jordie's studio and describing how they had sex with their partners to each other. Our Narrator goes first and describes various positions and elaborate mental visualizations, then Jordie describes her experiences in a much more organic, less premeditated manner.
O.N. was "bludgeoned by this vision of intimacy. It wasn't a matter of having lost at this conversation: (she) had lost at life."
Maybe Jordie's "body-rooted", long suffering "Driver" character is the foil to Our Narrator's "mind-rooted", never satisfied "Parker" character?
It’s super important to me to see all kinds of sex happening for people especially into perimenopause and menopause — I feel like I’ve gotten more sexually aware, more sexually interested post-baby and now that I’m fully into menopause I have found that sex is even more interesting (I mean, not always obviously).
“ I feel like I’ve gotten more sexually aware, more sexually interested post-baby and now that I’m fully into menopause I have found that sex is even more interesting.”
Yes!! I want to hear more of this!
Wait. Am I really the first one to respond? Are people feeling nervous about discussing this part of the book? Having been someone once prone to the kind of obsession I think the narrator is dealing with here, so much about these chapters resonates with me.
I love how July does not make penis/vagina sex the pinnacle of intimacy -- far from it, actually. Even though the affair with Davey is never consummated in the traditional sense, I feel that what they DO DO is way more intimate. And hot, honestly. Even (especially?) the tampon scene! But I wonder if this is one part that might feel like it went too far for some folks.
Do you still feel empathy for the narrator after this intimacy with Davey? Do you think you would if they had actually had intercourse? I suspect that some readers at least would be much more judgmental if they had actually had "sex" - because that is, for so many people in the straight world (and probably the queer world too?) crossing a line that cannot be forgiven or walked back. I mean, clearly even for Davey, that is/would be crossing a line he’s not willing to cross. Probably many people would be more upset about that kind of infidelity than the shared intimacy they have?
The intensity of the narrator needing Davey to be thinking about her in a sexual way feels so authentic and compelling to me. This whole affair, really, isn’t it all just about the narrator needing to feel alive? Needing to feel like she’s still a vibrant, sexual being? And, I mean, she IS those things. But that is the role Davey plays - his whole purpose is really just to confirm her sexuality for her. Right? And in a world where we (women) are written off sexually - especially as as we age, but for other reasons too - being too fat or disabled, or becoming mothers, for instance - that kind of erasure can feel so painful. I think the narrator found/created this great opportunity to reclaim her sexuality in a really exciting way and she’s not about to just let it slip through her fingers. I may just be projecting though here because I experienced something similar around when I turned 40.
Unrelated - I want to encourage everyone to listen to the audio book if you're not already. MJ reads it herself and it's really just such a brilliant performance. (you can read along AND listen if you like that kinda thing).
Love all this, thank you Erin! It hadn't occurred to me that people might be squeamish about this section bc I'm so into it, but that's a good point!
You have so many good points here that I just love. This: "I love how July does not make penis/vagina sex the pinnacle of intimacy -- far from it, actually." Yes! I didn't quite think of it this way, but yes.
"Do you still feel empathy for the narrator after this intimacy with Davey? Do you think you would if they had actually had intercourse? " This is also SUCH a good question. I feel like probably not! I think I actually had more empathy for both of them, but esp the narrator, bc what they have feels so much more original and unique and intimate than that. I LOVE dance and it's one of my love languages and the intimacy of their dancing together and his dancing was more compelling to me than any old sex scene would be. I can see how that kind of rare and irreplicable experience would make her feel a terrible loss.
I agree with you totally that her affair with Davey is much more intimate than it would have been if they had gone ahead and just had sex. They spent so much time being with each other, gazing at each other, appreciating each other. That Davey can go home to Claire and deny having an affair is an outrage!
I also loved the audio book.
Agree--I found that bathroom scene to be way more intimate than any sex scene could have been. From a writing standpoint it felt totally original and new and definitely endeared me more to the characters.
I realized I didn't quite answer most of the questions Lane posed. Sorry! I guess it's probably obvious from what I did write that I found the whole aspect of how mid-life sexuality is portrayed here refreshing. Exhilarating even. I don't really remember much about the parts of flashing back to the traumatic birth. I guess those parts feel so secondary to me I think they were really just meant to help us empathize with Harris maybe? But I kept wondering and kind of wanting to see what the narrator's relationship with Harris was like in the early stages of when they met. I find it so hard to picture and I was curious about that.
Like you, I also had a hot fling with someone younger than me (albeit in my late 30's) so some of this definitely resonated with me. I wasn't married but was recently divorced, but I'm sure some of this was in play regardless: "Needing to feel like she’s still a vibrant, sexual being? And, I mean, she IS those things. But that is the role Davey plays - his whole purpose is really just to confirm her sexuality for her."
But also it was so powerful to be like, this hot guy is into me and I"m not going to resist it. Why should I?? I'm going to go for it, even if he's not the "right guy" or the "approved" guy that people expect me to be with. And why should I believe that I'm "too old" or that I'm not longer desirable because I'm not 20-something anymore, when there is this overwhelming evidence that that's not true?!
It was powerful for me to be like, "forget the taboos, I'm just going to take what I want." Life-changing!
As you know, we fell in love and now have a baby and now he plays the role of my hot young lover *and my solid partner who I experience domestic drudgery with. Which is interesting for me, esp as I read this book!
Agree I also have a hard time seeing the narrator and Harris in love/early days. Would love to see that...
"How crazy and vain did you have to be to kill yourself when you found out that your main thrill, the thing that really got you going, was gone forever? Maybe not so crazy. If birth was being thrown energetically up into the air, we aged as we rose. At the height of our ascent we were middle-aged and then we fell for the rest of our lives, the whole second half. Falling might take just as long, but it was nothing like rising. The whole time you were rising you could not imagine what came next in your particular, unique journey; you could not see around the corner. Whereas falling ended the same way for everyone. I paced around the new carpet, remembering when my friend’s eighty-year-old dad had winked at me while I was dancing. This wasn’t a funny anomaly; this was the order of the day. In the future I might be grateful when this happened, even if the man was ninety, one hundred, one hundred twenty. A man of any age."
That line just ended me for a while. I've thought this thought pretty identically before.
"...Now, for the first time, I understood what all the fuss was about. How something beautiful could strike your heart, move you, bring you down on your knees and then, somewhat perversely, you wanted to fuck that pure, beautiful thing. Sex was a way to have it, to not just look at it but to be with it."
This one isn't as relatable for me personally but I really liked how accurate it reads?
She was killing me so much while she thought he had zero interest in her. Because I mean, I can only imagine the character is at least as attractive as the author and she can't be that lacking in self-awareness at 45. Then I remember she lives in LA so maybe it does seem that bad sometimes but I don't think so. Not for thin women anyway. Rich, thin, famous-adjacent women.
This section of the book really pulled me in. I’m really related to her obsession with needing to be desired. I’m sorry if that comes across as shallow, it’s certainly something I have been evaluating for years with my therapist! I feel like I’m just so conditioned to put all my value into my desirability. In recent years I’ve stopped getting Botox and even stopped coloring my hair because I’m so pissed about how this anti aging message is woven into every dollar I’m supposed to spend. Yet, I still wonder if I could get Davey…??!! Also, the way the two of them are intimate is much hotter than sex in my opinion. They’re constantly in that moment of before times. I was falling off my couch during the tampon scene. Not so sure about sticking her hand in his stream of pee though…
Yes, I was like, burning though the pages in this section! So hot and so well written--what a combo!
The tampon sceeeeeene!! So brilliant. I loved that it made me the teensiest bit uncomfortable and also veryyyy into it. Kinda like good sex. The like, are we gonna do this kink, and the exhiliration of doing it and loving it. The hot pee part actually felt totally right to me. I was like yes go for ittttt haha. And then the tampon was written in a way that was just uhhhh so vulnerable and intimate and so hot--so much hotter than just a dumb old regular sex scene. I was like, well, that's the part where this finally consummates! (narratively v effectively without actually consummating). Strangely very satisfying.
I thought she just made this gross task I hate very sexy - she MUST be a good writer!
100%!!! So true!
Lady friend,
I could talk for hours about how I feel about my desirability disappearing. And listen to other women talk about how they feel about same.
This is VERY relatable and every single one of us feel this to some degree whether we want to admit or not. What Jess mentions above is how we are conditioned to feel from birth and it's very frustrating that we are taught to perceive our own worth through the male/corporate gaze.
Yeah I've been digesting my comfort level on how I can comment without metaphorically getting naked on a lot of the most interesting parts of the book, it's a bit of a dilemma. But I will realize just how pervasive and internalized (to some extent) that gaze is just from random shit that happens. When my husband started with his situation I was still recovering from having our daughter so it really did my head in a bit extra. I have a lot of male friends and my need for them to reassure me that I wasn't in fact unfuckable (I wasn't fucking my friends, just asking for “unbiased ‘ opinions that obviously were very biased). But I felt like I would just die every time I had enough time to myself to think about it. Luckily I had very little time like that for almost 5 years.
Summer Book club discussion Part 2.
Full disclosure, I am a squeamish person who rarely consumes explicitly violent or scary or sexual books/ media because I can't unsee disturbing images which alway seem to find their way into my bad dreams on dark and stormy nights. No judgement toward intimate behavior between consenting adults in real life or fiction, but, unlike Our Narrator, I don't feel like I need to know or share every excruciating detail of each encounter. So the first time through Chapters 7-14 of All Fours you can imagine me covering my eyes with my hands and peeking through my fingers to read the book, all the while silently shouting to Miranda (of course we are on a first name basis at this point) "TMI, TMI, TMI!"
But I appreciated the matter of fact delivery of the sexual encounters, no more salacious than a grocery list. "Telling her story" is how Our Narrator interprets the world and we, the readers, are firmly positioned in her POV. Her observations are clear eyed and self deprecating and occasionally hilarious but aggressively self serving. She could no more leave out the details of her sexual desires/encounters as she could stop breathing air.
She want's to be a Driver, but she wallows in the characteristics of a Parker, focusing exclusively on "a discrete task that seems impossible, something that takes every bit of focus....the rest of the time she was bored and fundamentally...disappointed."
I would have been happier for her if she was making herself happy. But she seems miserable most of the time, longing for consummation with the unattainable Davey, while distancing herself from a stand-up husband and a sweet kid.
The flash backs to her traumatic FMH birth story and references to a child hood with difficult parents lets us know that Our Narrator is a damaged person who has had a hard reconciling the pain in her past with her "normal" present. Her past trauma is compounded when she becomes consumed with regret about her lack of sexual experiences during her prime. The diagnosis of perimenopause sends her into a panic.
Am I the only one who found the flashbacks to her traumatic birth to be a foil for her affair (confronting death + wanting to feel alive?), and also a way to convey how little intimacy and closeness she felt with Harris and was therefore craving it?
This might be because I gave birth not too long ago (5 years ago), and it felt like it profoundly transformed by relationship to bodies/my body/the concept of life. it felt like my body wasn't mine anymore as a vehicle for pleasure or just in any way, and I was grappling with how to reclaim it (which I kinda see in this character but might be projecting!). And I was also just felt so much closer to the possibility of death because I was responsible for keeping a helpless creature alive 24/7. I was haunted by bad things happening to the baby and semi-consumed with vigilance to keep her safe, while also confronting the fact that I couldn't completely guarantee that. And I had a pretty non-traumatic birth experience! I remember a quote from Esther Perel, something along the lines of "the erotic is the antidote to death" and that came to mind several times for me in reading this section.
The flashbacks also open up revealing aspects of her relationship with Harris, who she wants to be intimate with but isn't. She describes how the vigil while they were waiting to see if the baby would make it was a dear time for her because she briefly felt the closeness to him that she craved. But once the baby was okay he instantly receded away again. She mentions again and again how she wants to be "known" by him and the fantasy that someday she will reveal herself to him in a way that he really sees her. But instead he just gives her the salute--a gesture made from a distance with no warmth or touch or intimacy. This might also be projecting my own divorce from a relationship where I felt lonely and not seen, but I saw her relationship with Davey as a deep craving to be seen and touched and finally having that fulfilled.
I can't answer this for you because I had a pretty traumatic birth experience (although not as bad as the narrator's) and my husband has some sort of issue with intimacy or even discussing his issue with intimacy that's led to us having, ok well it's actually just led to me having an open marriage. But there are no other similarities. My husband and I did not screw silently next to the crib. It's really amazing that I have a child with the man at all and it's not something I'm especially grateful to him for.
Our Narrator says she wants to "break through" with Harris and whimsically imagines how it happens in the future. But each time she has an actual chance in the present to get closer to him, she is the one who backs away from intimacy with him.
Likewise, after all of Our Narrator's love talk about her child from a distance, it was jolting to read that the 'do-no-harm" nanny had so little regular interaction with O.N. that she didn't realize she wasn't holed up in the garage when she called to talk to Sam.
I wondered why Miranda seemed to be going out of her way to show the reader that the narrator has a decent mate, space and time to herself apart from being a wife/mother, and still feels unseen and bereft?
I think it has to do with the way aging is the great equalizer for women, especially in a society that prioritizes superlatives; the best, the thinnest, the most beautiful, the smartest, and so on. Of all the things that are out of our control, time is the least forgiving and the least caring. The scene where our narrator finds the hormonal graph on the interwebs and shares it with Jordie is pure gold. They are gobsmacked with shock at the unfairness between the catastrophic drop off in estrogen for women after menopause and the barely noticeable decrease in testosterone for men. It sends her into a three month frenzy to beat the impending decline into the abyss, or even the "deathzone" that took its ultimate toll on her Grandmother and Aunt.
Susan I really appreciate this comment and especially reminding us of the Driver v. Parker metaphor. Our narrator is so task focused, so striving for the next hit/high, that and ultimately isn’t satisfied by any relationship. I’m a bit bothered by her relationship with Jordi, who is presented as always available, wise, loving and stoic, but about whom we know very little. She’s like the “magical lesbian” to the narrator’s straight(ish)-privileged hero. It’s interesting bc the narrator’s self-absorption around her own desires strike me as stereotypically male — constant seeking, relying on past successes (her past work or her time with Davey) to propel her actions, but then they are wrapped in a midlife female self-deprecating self-obsession. Even the turn toward perimenopause doesn’t actually go anywhere — it feeds anxiety but it doesn’t seem to stuck around in a meaningful way in the narrative. It also (might?) feed an idea that female biology makes women bananas. I think there’s some redemption in this later in the book (I just tore through it!) but I can’t help but feel like this all remains incomplete. Last thing — the descriptions of the traumatic birth experience are incredible and absolutely made me cry. Same with the suicides of her grandmother and aunt. So there’s a lot of unwellness in this book that just kind of lurks around, but so far goes…unresolved. I’m not 100% sure what I’m looking for but somehow there’s an integration that I want the narrator to achieve, and so far that’s not happening. I couldn’t put it down though.
I'm not as far along as you are (ha!) but one question I find myself asking a lot is whether she deliberately wrote some of this experience as a flipped script with a woman in the role as the famous, wealthy artist who gets to live freely and pursue their desires (including w adoring fans). Just to kind of mess w that trope and make us ask ourselves if we judge differently when it's a woman.
I still don't know!
Very true about the flipped script! So much so that I found myself siding with Harris when they finally have their confrontation (might be further along than chapter 14) when he says she has wasted what should have been the best years of his life.
I might have said something like that to my first husband when we were getting divorced, realizing that we never were on the same page from the beginning, that my assumptions of common goals and good faith were never based in reality.
Yes, Jordie is too good to be true! She's available at all hours to listen to our narrator's exploits, never taking offense when her comments are brushed off or otherwise dismissed. If they hadn't had their weekly in person junk food meet-ups, I would have wondered if she was an AI generated bot.
Although there was a moment much earlier in the book with Jordie that seemed to launch Our Narrator into her emotional crisis. It was while they were eating ice cream in Jordie's studio and describing how they had sex with their partners to each other. Our Narrator goes first and describes various positions and elaborate mental visualizations, then Jordie describes her experiences in a much more organic, less premeditated manner.
O.N. was "bludgeoned by this vision of intimacy. It wasn't a matter of having lost at this conversation: (she) had lost at life."
Maybe Jordie's "body-rooted", long suffering "Driver" character is the foil to Our Narrator's "mind-rooted", never satisfied "Parker" character?