Madame Bovary in the 1968 television movie adaptation.
Note: Readers voted to discuss the whole book now since so many of us have read ahead or have finished. As a courtesy to other readers, try not to indicate how the book ends for those who are still finishing, and if you give too much away please give a spoiler alert. Thank you!
…
Do we like this character, and do we find her relatable? As I get toward the end, this question keeps coming up for me personally and in conversations about this novel. What do we find likeable and not likeable, and what do we find relatable or not? And how might that color our experience of the book? In theory it doesn’t matter how likeable a character is (male protagonists are often quite terrible) or influence whether a book or piece or art is considered “good.” But of course that’s just not true of women in real life (hello politics!) or art, so it seems that it’s worth interrogating.
This character takes bold and unorthodox stances on monogamy, sex, marriage, gender roles, how to respond to aging and menopause, and many other choices. How do you find yourself responding to those and relating or not?
This thread is part of our MR Summer Book Club, if you’re not a subscriber and would like to get all our book club posts, subscribe below. You can also find all the details on book club in this post. We still have another week left—it’s not too late to join!
Note: Most of the book club chats and posts will be free to anyone, but a few will be paywalled as a bonus for paid subscribers. For the full experience, you can upgrade your subscription to paid here.
We are still running a limited-time summer book club discount on annual subscriptions for $39 (that’s only $3.25 a month!)
To be honest I kind of loved this character's "journeying spirit" during the first half of the book, and her caution to the wind thrown. There's something gratifying to me about a woman taking what she wants and refusing to play a part that doesn't suit her. Even as friends have been like, "don't you feel bad for Claire?" I had to say...I didn't even think about Claire! What does that say about me? haha
The part where I don't relate as much is her reactions and responses to middle age. I am in such a different place in my 40's because I had a baby. So I was so immersed in new parenthood, postpartum, then a pandemic while I was still postpartum and relocating my family across the country, I have just been in survival mode for much of my 40's. So all this about what about perimenopause and my sexuality falling off a cliff was just like FAR from my thoughts. I'm probably just getting on my feet enough now to have to start to confront that.
I find myself annoyed that when she discovers that she's aging she just goes to the gym all the time and gets super hot and fit and she apparently has VERY LITTLE WORK to do--like she doesn't actually have to work for money or take care of her child much?? That's all I do! She's Just getting hot and shooting videos of herself and having trysts. Haha! This is SO FAR from my reality and the most frustrating thing for me about ageing rn is just trying to find the time to do anything about it! From working out, to getting a gut friendly diet, to just going to the damn doctor! I found that part to be not relatable and very Hollywood.
I actually found the fitness journey to be consistent with the first chunk of the book—obsessive and a little unhinged in a semi-absurdist way?
To be honest, there’s not a lot that I relate to about her, my life and experiences are so different on almost every level. But I still find her fascinating and frustrating and even amidst decisions I think are pretty terrible and selfish, I feel great compassion for her.
One other note on the perimenopause thing. I was anticipating and aware of that even in my late 30s and I feel like a lot of my friends were too so it was interesting to me that she was so blindsided by it…
How did you get so lucky to know about perimenopause? I feel like I still don't know much. I took a photo of the page where she describes what her doctor prescribes her so I can show my doctor and be like, why can't I get this??
I think I was convinced I was in perimenopause before I actually was? Or who knows since there’s been so little research, attention, and medical for any of it! Though thankfully I think that’s changing.
All of the parts about perimenopause make me really stressed out because I was conned into getting a hysterectomy at 36. He didn't (of course it was a he, although every she involved didn't do anything to prevent or stop the medical coercion either) remove my ovaries but an instant result of the surgery was several months of essentially full-on menopause from "shock"? Now I'm always confused about where in my cycle I am because I still get terrible PMS and instead of cramps I get mittelschmerz pain (I love that word though). I've created a really thick, multilayered form of amnesia and denial to avoid dealing with this issue and everything related to it and I understand that it's part of the whole storyline of the book, this transitional age. But I felt like she could be less precious about it.
Oof I'm so sorry what a trauma and betrayal. Awful. I think something like this happens to the mother character too, right--the narrator's mother? And I want to say the mother character brushes it off but then the father is like um, yeah, she moved out into her own apt. when that happened so it was not "nothing."
At this point the series of events that happened involving my daughter and myself throughout the end of my pregnancy and the years following I have to assume are related to the quality of care related to living in a red state. Mistakes were made, primarily because people weren't listening to me and I'd be lying if I said it hadn't created a huge problem with my ability to trust physicians. Now that the state is demonstrably worse for women but we haven't lost many doctors…I feel like that's all the proof I need. They didn't leave because they're either kind of incompetent or they're more concerned with their career stability than the health of their patients.
Her reaction to the diagnosis—“what?!??!”—felt so different from my experience or other women I know. We talk about it a lot or blame any random issue on it.
My emotions are all over the place a lot lately and I'd really felt like I'd calmed down (relatively I'll admit) throughout my 30’s. Looking back on my extended adolescence it really felt like I was a slave to my emotions courtesy of my hormones. And I didn't enjoy or appreciate it so much as I felt like I should have enjoyed a lot of my twenties. It felt great to feel not exactly less but feel more rationally. Now I'm starting to feel like I did when I was a teenager again except everything is worse lol. I'm a lot more irritable than I was the first go round and it really sucks.
Thank you so much for asking this question! I have really been thinking about this so much since starting the book. And as we discussed, I had a hard time starting it, and then when I did, I tore into it. I don't like our narrator. I think she's a narcissist. I was weirdly rooting for something to come to fruition for her -- to get back together with her husband, to feel some sense of connection to the people she interviewed about menopause...without giving away too much, my feeling was that this character just kept riding compulsive waves of connection and separation and I wanted her to land somewhere. I'm similarly annoyed with male protagonists who don't "go" anywhere, but I think it's just generally disheartening not to see a character transform. Do other folks sense a transformation here? Maybe at the end (again, without giving away too much)?
But to answer your questions Lane, I totally applaud all the exploration and adventure this character has sexually. I think it's great. I just wish it had changed something for her. But maybe that's just me looking for a happy ending (LOL)?
This is so interesting because it never crossed my mind that she's a narcissist (I haven't finished the book yet but am pretty far along...)
I think I see so much of this narrative as a woman just kind of having the guts and privilege to do what a lot of men do. I have some ambivalence about this, but I think that's part of the point of the book! Do we judge women more harshly or not, do we pathologize their choices in a way we don't do to men...or should be pathologize men's too...? . The answers are not aways clear to me!
I actually did feel like the character undergoes a pretty clear transformation. Once she enters that motel room and renovates it it kind of becomes a space (cocoon?) that she enters and her self and her life will never be the same. Embracing her desire and her need for freedom transform her and her life, for better or worse. I'm not at the end yet, though!
This is what I meant when I said that I really believe July is fascinated by making female characters that are EXTREMELY difficult to like. They're never all bad, they're usually privileged but not as much as this character I have to say. But they're often shallow and oblivious to it. I actually had a hard time figuring out what the best friend gets out of the friendship. And how she managed to have a network of so many different kinds of pretty awesome women friends.
I thought exactly the same about the friends. Like, she just has a plethora of diverse and amazing women that she can solicit advice from at any time of the day and night. And her best friend is so available and affirming of all her choices but the relationship seems very one sided.
Yes, exactly! I'm not saying she doesn't deserve any friends at all but it feels like…there's a minimum level of reciprocity necessary to be the foundation for any “meaningful” close friendship? And I don't really see it as being met from what's shown in the novel. Then again this has been a stumbling block in my own friendships at times so there might be something obvious to others that I'm not seeing. To me in a lot of ways the narrator is an adult example of some of the worst friendships in my life. Not really present for me when I needed them, claiming to be loyal but too concerned about missing out on opportunities to get closer to folks she saw as higher in the social hierarchy than myself, I guess. The opposite side of that was the best friend after the superficial one who waa definitely more loyal but who made many many proclamations about who “we” disliked and didn't always provide the most supportive evidence. I still prefer that friendship in a lot of ways because I do value loyalty. But she “broke up” with me when she came out at 42 and there was really no explanation given as to why. I have zero problems with her sexuality. Many friends joked that in her case, she was literally the last to know. Which sounds funny but I understand that she was likely working through a lot of confusion, shame, and self-hatred for years. She didn't grow up seeing lesbians at all where she was from, and she definitely wanted children. The question of her sexuality came up a lot with acquaintances but it just wasn't important to me as a close friend. I knew she wasn't interested in me and when she announced she was coming out I wasn't suddenly convinced she'd been harboring a crush on me this whole time. I know that's not at all how it works. I didn't think anything was going to change except she'd be happier. Which makes me happy. She'd already gotten a divorce from the dude she had her kids with and things seemed to be excellent. I'm just not invited. I know it's really unlikely to have anything to do with me other than the number of years I was her coworker and roommate before she came out. I'm not homophobic and I've never said anything that would give her the impression I was. The only two friends at my baby shower were her and my childhood best friend who is also a lesbian. They both brought their moms. My very prissy in-laws threw the shower. It was so awkward and terrible for me and them (hence they brought their moms for protection lol). It's been a few years and I try not to think about it too often but it was such a long stretch of time we lived and worked together and my only other frame of reference is gone. Do the rest of you experience breakups with BFF as actually MUCH WORSE than boyfriends? I can't speak on divorce (yet at least) but the level of heartbreak from losing your ride or die bestie is a completely different level than most boyfriends IMO.
Oh goodness, friend break ups are so much more devastating than boyfriends (l haven’t experienced splitting from my long term partner & the father of my child so perhaps underestimating it). And breaking up as an adult is heartbreaking. As a teenager and in my 20’s my friends were EVERYTHING to me, to the exclusion of boys really (probably if Gen X had been as open sexually as Gen Z are then I probably would have found myself at least bi but it just didn’t seem like an option then). I was obsessed with my friends. I suppose we only see one side of the relationships in the novel but I feel like July could’ve made the choice to flesh out the friendships if she’d wanted to. The narrator also felt much more liberated and connected with her friends than her husband, which I found interesting as she’s obviously capable of connection, just not with Harris.
Yes, although it feels like her friends know her fairly well but she doesn't pay attention to them until she needs to, yet they all show up. It bothered me. Which is the point I guess, I just don't know why.
I also didn’t really like her but I found her fascinating. And it made me wonder why I felt like that - do I have internalised misogyny that makes me dislike ballsy women? Maybe I just couldn’t relate to her, as a UK based non semi famous woman!
I too always want more of a transformation from characters, both male and female (though I primarily read books by and about women). I’ve come to think that this is rooted in my preference for commercial fiction, wanting a happy ending. But I can settle for a satisfying ending, which this book gave me (not to give anything away and I’ve also kinda forgotten some details already😬). Historically the lack of transformation/redemption/happy ending was my biggest complaint about literary fiction (along with lack of plot). But if the writing and characterization deliver, I’m here for it…
Some of the above comments about motherhood, the performance and drudgery of it, had me thinking that the one thing that was more traditionally “likable” about the narrator is how much she loves her kid. Like the fact that Sam was non-binary yet she never expounds or even comments on it (except for the one time where she tells someone not to gender her kid) was heartwarming to me. She seemed to simply adore and accept them unconditionally. It was the one relationship that felt truly grounded and non…transactional (I think that’s the word I want). But I’m not a mother so I’m curious if others felt this way.
The narrator seemed to think of herself as a bad mother due to her internal feelings but outwardly I found myself really touched by their interactions. There was one moment when she was tidying up and started playing a game with the child that belied her views on domestic drudgery. Also the respect she showed them when telling them about the new arrangement really spoke to how much she cares.
I was just so captivated by the idea that having the freedom to do as you please can mean NOT doing what you set out to do. It is the single most unique thing about the book and the thing I tell everyone it is about. For me it was about really confronting the ‘should dos’ and doing exactly what is desired in the moment, even if this is obscure or unexciting.
Or expensive and wasteful. Or foolish and deviant. Or heartless and narcissistic. It was the idea that fiction can allow an exploration of what the heart desires and be completely true to the desire itself, and not the need to be validated or seen to be doing whatever. So she has an opportunity to do ‘a big thing’ and she completely disregards it in a faithful pursuit of the momentary compulsion to not drive, to eat, to decorate, to explore someone else’s mind and body. I found that really interesting.
I did not believe the getting fit transformation. As a woman with a stubborn perimenopausal body, I think just how much more graft there is in sorting a body out than July really credits here.
"I was just so captivated by the idea that having the freedom to do as you please can mean NOT doing what you set out to do."
Wow, I love this! I have not thought of it this way but I love this framing. Isn't this so much of life--for women especially? Setting out to do the "should do's" and beating yourself up for not succeeding or doing it fast enough/soon enough, etc.? And then knocking yourself out to do the "should do's" never pausing to ask if it's even what you want anymore, or ever did, or who it's serving, or whose idea it was in the first place.
So much freedom and power in NOT finishing what you set out to do.
I’m reading The First Bad Man now and it has another interesting female lead who is unafraid of herself and her desires. Worth a read if you enjoyed All fours.
Agreed that the unique thing was having the freedom to not what you set out to do. There’s so much to say about desire here via the narrator or the author herself. Desire seems to be the most fluid of emotional states and the illusion can be fulfilling our desire will bring us ….. ( happiness, satisfaction , sense of self , transformation and on) I try to remember that there is a temporal aspect to desire and that the intensity is before and during and how lasting is the fulfillment of this character and for each of us. It is still fascinating to me this very topic and the experimentation towards changing the social constraints( heterodox, agism, suffocation in disconnected marriages and more) .
Very absorbing novel but the jury is out on whether I will remember it as profound or a good read. I think I’m being challenged by my older age .
I’m interested in what you’re saying here, Christina.
I think that she’s a character who had become accustomed to fulfilling her desires quite easily. She became obsessed with the two characters who did not allow her to do this immediately - or in quite the way she wanted. I like the way the novel shows that desires can only be fulfilled by money to a degree, but money cannot buy compliance from others. This hits her hard and her transformations come as a result of other people’s boundaries.
I enjoyed the way she could suspend her own and everyone else’s expectation of how she would spend her time and how she did this without much guilt.
It is a greedy world, July portrays, with almost everyone out for themselves,
I agree with you that it’s not disrupting societal norms because she was an unusual character - and she’s set up to be experimental and subversive. I’d really like to read something like this about someone who begins really ordinary. I thought it was going to be about someone who submits to momentary, present desires and ignores all sense of past and future and gives full commitment to the present. But she became quite distracted with the future, in the end, and I found that disappointing.
What is it that makes you say you are challenged by your age? If you don’t mind my asking?
Well I’m guessing I’m a lot older , 72, I’m still working and my daughters are millennials . I’m not playing pickle ball and I’m reading Miranda July! Having tweens when I was in perimenopause was something else ! I love to hear women’s perspectives from their present experience at whatever age they are which usually is so different from “looking back” perspectives . Like what you wrote.
Some of my friends who were reading and engaged in the 70s have directed me to literature that seems so ahead of its time. I’m dipping in and out of ‘The Wise Wound’ by Shuttle and Redgrave and it feels quite contemporary. Reading outside of our age-bracket is essential!
Likability and relatability… As soon as we started this book club I couldn’t help but wonder if readers, even if they maintained sympathy with the narrator through the Davey situationship, would be able to hang on through the graphic sex scene with Audra, the older woman. I wondered if that might be especially tough for straight readers...but maybe queer ones too - particularly ones who are under 50). I wondered if people might feel repulsed at the descriptions or or excited by them? Or neither? How did it hit you?
I was so anxious at the start of that scene that it was going to really just end in an ageist ick (as the kids say) on the part of the narrator. But I was so so so happy about the turn it took and the interior processing we get from the narrator, working THROUGH her own ageism and finding such a deep sensual (if not sexual) experience with Audra. That definitely endeared me more to the narrator or at least to Miranda July herself.
I do think though there is a general uneasiness I still feel about some of the narrator’s own internalized ageism/sexism. The obsession with working out is a good example of this. But it does feel true to me in that I know many people feel that way or struggle along those same lines. I mean, I think we all do to some extent.
It did not occur to me to think much about Claire (I think Lane said this too) - which maybe also says something not so nice about me. Or maybe it just says that I don’t value the kind of monogamy that most people in polite society say they value? I mean, clearly Davey loves Claire and was not planning to leave her and maybe that particular (and peculiar) tryst with our narrator was just something he had to do to keep his own fire alive. I’d get that. I mean, he was a fan of her work before he met her and what they had together meant something pretty specific to him. I don’t have the sense that he’s just out there trying to hook up with [older] women on the regular, you know? Somehow, to me, I guess that lets our narrator off the hook. But I might rethink that if these were people I actually knew and cared about in real life.
Anyway, to me, the narrator is “likable” in that she’s flawed. Like really flawed. And neurotic. I guess maybe I wouldn’t use the word “likable” – too many negative connotations bound up in that word/ idea for women anyway. To me she is a sympathetic character because she’s messy and also she’s interesting! As in, NOT BORING. As in alive! I do always feel drawn to characters who are committed to their own life spark, to their own liberation - both in fiction and in real life, I think.
I do think that the narrator has a transformation throughout the book, if in no other ways, than for the fact that she’d been in a marriage that was lonely and disconnected and she got out of it.
She kind of blew her life up to save herself, I think. And I definitely relate to that.
So much here! I loved the Audra scene -- I thought it was sensuous and hot and totally real. I didn't feel badly for Claire because I think Claire really got exactly what she wanted too -- professional expression and the $20K she and Davey were hoping for. For all we know, they had an open marriage! I thought Claire was a pro, and it felt like there was mutual understanding at play.
"I do think that the narrator has a transformation throughout the book, if in no other ways, than for the fact that she’d been in a marriage that was lonely and disconnected and she got out of it. She kind of blew her life up to save herself, I think. And I definitely relate to that."
Yes, Erin, this is v much me too. Because I ended a one-sided marriage to save myself and blew up my life on many fronts (made many decisions that were not expected/"acceptable" to much of my family/community of origin), I think I relate to this character more than some. I also see that as brave and exciting even though my own experience was not all like hers in the details--bc you risk so much when you're a woman who rebels, esp if you're a mother. And it literally transforms you into a new person--there's a clear before and after.
FWIW I loved the Audra scene! It felt original and totally true and I felt like Audra had the upper hand the whole time. Also felt sexy! Maybe not quite the same way as the Davey scenes…but exciting.
By the end the narrator realizes that Audra has a bed in her house bc she’s hooking up all the time and she’s way more sexually adventurous than the narrator! I think she’s an inspiration and I would def like all women to find their inner Audra.
Like in seeing Audra as desirable I think the narrator could see *her future self as desirable too and not sexually dead but alive. May we all have that as we age!
"Like in seeing Audra as desirable I think the narrator could see *her future self as desirable too and not sexually dead but alive. May we all have that as we age!"
It's very hard for me to comment on the things I really want to comment on without considering them potential spoilers. I think I can safely say that it's easy to love and hate the narrator, to be scornful of her lack of common sense, to feel sympathy with her as she recites her little litanies of daily drudgery (just the food prep was so depressed, how much energy she's giving it). I too have put far too much of my attention on things that while not toxic (healthy food for my family) don't necessarily need to peel the grapes or string the celery (except I did need to string the celery for my daughter). No bento boxes here but it's not from a lack of suggesting them on my part. All of this energy she's putting into telegraphing to others the kind of virtuous mother she is? That feels pretty relatable to when my daughter was a toddler and preschooler. I don't really have a good explanation for why. Claire? That's just so messed up. She makes her dreams come true, out of some sort of need to absolve herself of guilt prematurely? I couldn't decide how I'd feel if I were Claire. 20K is nothing to sneeze at.
"All of this energy she's putting into telegraphing to others the kind of virtuous mother she is." This is relatable to every mother. I think I just realized that I hate school pickup because I feel I have to perform "virtuous mother" while my mom bounces off the walls and generally blows off all the steam she's been working up all day and I have to gather her and her belongings and get her out of the building while performing "virtuous mother." Ha!
Your mom is a nightmare in school pickup line?! I have to take anxiety medicine because I get what I suppose road rage feels like if you might actually kill someone, but only in afternoon pickup line.
I listen to Bratmobile or Mommy Longlegs really loud in the pickup line. Mommy Longlegs especially has two songs that are balm for my bad attitude. “Yuppie Moms” and ‘Assholes”. I feel like I'm going to be a teenager my entire life and NOT in a good way. I'm not sure there is a good way to feel like that.
There are times in the book where you can imagine Miranda (the director) filming a scene. I found the departure to the field of women immediately after the narrator and Harris's falling out very touching and it works well on the page and I'd imagine it working well on the screen too. "We were all running to the same field, a place we hadn't discussed but implicitly knew we would meet in when the tipping point tipped. [...] Soon it was just a million women waiting for their mates to call, to be needed, and then to fall into panic and guilt, to be torn, which was our primary state. Start the revolution here, now, in this field? Or drive home and slip back into the fold, use the electric toothbrush, feel grim and trapped? Of course there was no decision to make because we were all already home, not in the field. There was no collective tipping point. Most of us wouldn't do anything very different, ever. Our yearning and quiet rage would be suppressed and seep into our children and they would hate this about us enough to do it a new way."
To be honest I kind of loved this character's "journeying spirit" during the first half of the book, and her caution to the wind thrown. There's something gratifying to me about a woman taking what she wants and refusing to play a part that doesn't suit her. Even as friends have been like, "don't you feel bad for Claire?" I had to say...I didn't even think about Claire! What does that say about me? haha
The part where I don't relate as much is her reactions and responses to middle age. I am in such a different place in my 40's because I had a baby. So I was so immersed in new parenthood, postpartum, then a pandemic while I was still postpartum and relocating my family across the country, I have just been in survival mode for much of my 40's. So all this about what about perimenopause and my sexuality falling off a cliff was just like FAR from my thoughts. I'm probably just getting on my feet enough now to have to start to confront that.
I find myself annoyed that when she discovers that she's aging she just goes to the gym all the time and gets super hot and fit and she apparently has VERY LITTLE WORK to do--like she doesn't actually have to work for money or take care of her child much?? That's all I do! She's Just getting hot and shooting videos of herself and having trysts. Haha! This is SO FAR from my reality and the most frustrating thing for me about ageing rn is just trying to find the time to do anything about it! From working out, to getting a gut friendly diet, to just going to the damn doctor! I found that part to be not relatable and very Hollywood.
I actually found the fitness journey to be consistent with the first chunk of the book—obsessive and a little unhinged in a semi-absurdist way?
To be honest, there’s not a lot that I relate to about her, my life and experiences are so different on almost every level. But I still find her fascinating and frustrating and even amidst decisions I think are pretty terrible and selfish, I feel great compassion for her.
One other note on the perimenopause thing. I was anticipating and aware of that even in my late 30s and I feel like a lot of my friends were too so it was interesting to me that she was so blindsided by it…
How did you get so lucky to know about perimenopause? I feel like I still don't know much. I took a photo of the page where she describes what her doctor prescribes her so I can show my doctor and be like, why can't I get this??
I think I was convinced I was in perimenopause before I actually was? Or who knows since there’s been so little research, attention, and medical for any of it! Though thankfully I think that’s changing.
All of the parts about perimenopause make me really stressed out because I was conned into getting a hysterectomy at 36. He didn't (of course it was a he, although every she involved didn't do anything to prevent or stop the medical coercion either) remove my ovaries but an instant result of the surgery was several months of essentially full-on menopause from "shock"? Now I'm always confused about where in my cycle I am because I still get terrible PMS and instead of cramps I get mittelschmerz pain (I love that word though). I've created a really thick, multilayered form of amnesia and denial to avoid dealing with this issue and everything related to it and I understand that it's part of the whole storyline of the book, this transitional age. But I felt like she could be less precious about it.
Oof I'm so sorry what a trauma and betrayal. Awful. I think something like this happens to the mother character too, right--the narrator's mother? And I want to say the mother character brushes it off but then the father is like um, yeah, she moved out into her own apt. when that happened so it was not "nothing."
At this point the series of events that happened involving my daughter and myself throughout the end of my pregnancy and the years following I have to assume are related to the quality of care related to living in a red state. Mistakes were made, primarily because people weren't listening to me and I'd be lying if I said it hadn't created a huge problem with my ability to trust physicians. Now that the state is demonstrably worse for women but we haven't lost many doctors…I feel like that's all the proof I need. They didn't leave because they're either kind of incompetent or they're more concerned with their career stability than the health of their patients.
I am so sorry that happened to you!
Her reaction to the diagnosis—“what?!??!”—felt so different from my experience or other women I know. We talk about it a lot or blame any random issue on it.
My emotions are all over the place a lot lately and I'd really felt like I'd calmed down (relatively I'll admit) throughout my 30’s. Looking back on my extended adolescence it really felt like I was a slave to my emotions courtesy of my hormones. And I didn't enjoy or appreciate it so much as I felt like I should have enjoyed a lot of my twenties. It felt great to feel not exactly less but feel more rationally. Now I'm starting to feel like I did when I was a teenager again except everything is worse lol. I'm a lot more irritable than I was the first go round and it really sucks.
Thank you so much for asking this question! I have really been thinking about this so much since starting the book. And as we discussed, I had a hard time starting it, and then when I did, I tore into it. I don't like our narrator. I think she's a narcissist. I was weirdly rooting for something to come to fruition for her -- to get back together with her husband, to feel some sense of connection to the people she interviewed about menopause...without giving away too much, my feeling was that this character just kept riding compulsive waves of connection and separation and I wanted her to land somewhere. I'm similarly annoyed with male protagonists who don't "go" anywhere, but I think it's just generally disheartening not to see a character transform. Do other folks sense a transformation here? Maybe at the end (again, without giving away too much)?
But to answer your questions Lane, I totally applaud all the exploration and adventure this character has sexually. I think it's great. I just wish it had changed something for her. But maybe that's just me looking for a happy ending (LOL)?
This is so interesting because it never crossed my mind that she's a narcissist (I haven't finished the book yet but am pretty far along...)
I think I see so much of this narrative as a woman just kind of having the guts and privilege to do what a lot of men do. I have some ambivalence about this, but I think that's part of the point of the book! Do we judge women more harshly or not, do we pathologize their choices in a way we don't do to men...or should be pathologize men's too...? . The answers are not aways clear to me!
I actually did feel like the character undergoes a pretty clear transformation. Once she enters that motel room and renovates it it kind of becomes a space (cocoon?) that she enters and her self and her life will never be the same. Embracing her desire and her need for freedom transform her and her life, for better or worse. I'm not at the end yet, though!
This is what I meant when I said that I really believe July is fascinated by making female characters that are EXTREMELY difficult to like. They're never all bad, they're usually privileged but not as much as this character I have to say. But they're often shallow and oblivious to it. I actually had a hard time figuring out what the best friend gets out of the friendship. And how she managed to have a network of so many different kinds of pretty awesome women friends.
I thought exactly the same about the friends. Like, she just has a plethora of diverse and amazing women that she can solicit advice from at any time of the day and night. And her best friend is so available and affirming of all her choices but the relationship seems very one sided.
Yes, exactly! I'm not saying she doesn't deserve any friends at all but it feels like…there's a minimum level of reciprocity necessary to be the foundation for any “meaningful” close friendship? And I don't really see it as being met from what's shown in the novel. Then again this has been a stumbling block in my own friendships at times so there might be something obvious to others that I'm not seeing. To me in a lot of ways the narrator is an adult example of some of the worst friendships in my life. Not really present for me when I needed them, claiming to be loyal but too concerned about missing out on opportunities to get closer to folks she saw as higher in the social hierarchy than myself, I guess. The opposite side of that was the best friend after the superficial one who waa definitely more loyal but who made many many proclamations about who “we” disliked and didn't always provide the most supportive evidence. I still prefer that friendship in a lot of ways because I do value loyalty. But she “broke up” with me when she came out at 42 and there was really no explanation given as to why. I have zero problems with her sexuality. Many friends joked that in her case, she was literally the last to know. Which sounds funny but I understand that she was likely working through a lot of confusion, shame, and self-hatred for years. She didn't grow up seeing lesbians at all where she was from, and she definitely wanted children. The question of her sexuality came up a lot with acquaintances but it just wasn't important to me as a close friend. I knew she wasn't interested in me and when she announced she was coming out I wasn't suddenly convinced she'd been harboring a crush on me this whole time. I know that's not at all how it works. I didn't think anything was going to change except she'd be happier. Which makes me happy. She'd already gotten a divorce from the dude she had her kids with and things seemed to be excellent. I'm just not invited. I know it's really unlikely to have anything to do with me other than the number of years I was her coworker and roommate before she came out. I'm not homophobic and I've never said anything that would give her the impression I was. The only two friends at my baby shower were her and my childhood best friend who is also a lesbian. They both brought their moms. My very prissy in-laws threw the shower. It was so awkward and terrible for me and them (hence they brought their moms for protection lol). It's been a few years and I try not to think about it too often but it was such a long stretch of time we lived and worked together and my only other frame of reference is gone. Do the rest of you experience breakups with BFF as actually MUCH WORSE than boyfriends? I can't speak on divorce (yet at least) but the level of heartbreak from losing your ride or die bestie is a completely different level than most boyfriends IMO.
Oh goodness, friend break ups are so much more devastating than boyfriends (l haven’t experienced splitting from my long term partner & the father of my child so perhaps underestimating it). And breaking up as an adult is heartbreaking. As a teenager and in my 20’s my friends were EVERYTHING to me, to the exclusion of boys really (probably if Gen X had been as open sexually as Gen Z are then I probably would have found myself at least bi but it just didn’t seem like an option then). I was obsessed with my friends. I suppose we only see one side of the relationships in the novel but I feel like July could’ve made the choice to flesh out the friendships if she’d wanted to. The narrator also felt much more liberated and connected with her friends than her husband, which I found interesting as she’s obviously capable of connection, just not with Harris.
Yes, although it feels like her friends know her fairly well but she doesn't pay attention to them until she needs to, yet they all show up. It bothered me. Which is the point I guess, I just don't know why.
I also didn’t really like her but I found her fascinating. And it made me wonder why I felt like that - do I have internalised misogyny that makes me dislike ballsy women? Maybe I just couldn’t relate to her, as a UK based non semi famous woman!
I too always want more of a transformation from characters, both male and female (though I primarily read books by and about women). I’ve come to think that this is rooted in my preference for commercial fiction, wanting a happy ending. But I can settle for a satisfying ending, which this book gave me (not to give anything away and I’ve also kinda forgotten some details already😬). Historically the lack of transformation/redemption/happy ending was my biggest complaint about literary fiction (along with lack of plot). But if the writing and characterization deliver, I’m here for it…
Some of the above comments about motherhood, the performance and drudgery of it, had me thinking that the one thing that was more traditionally “likable” about the narrator is how much she loves her kid. Like the fact that Sam was non-binary yet she never expounds or even comments on it (except for the one time where she tells someone not to gender her kid) was heartwarming to me. She seemed to simply adore and accept them unconditionally. It was the one relationship that felt truly grounded and non…transactional (I think that’s the word I want). But I’m not a mother so I’m curious if others felt this way.
The narrator seemed to think of herself as a bad mother due to her internal feelings but outwardly I found myself really touched by their interactions. There was one moment when she was tidying up and started playing a game with the child that belied her views on domestic drudgery. Also the respect she showed them when telling them about the new arrangement really spoke to how much she cares.
I was just so captivated by the idea that having the freedom to do as you please can mean NOT doing what you set out to do. It is the single most unique thing about the book and the thing I tell everyone it is about. For me it was about really confronting the ‘should dos’ and doing exactly what is desired in the moment, even if this is obscure or unexciting.
Or expensive and wasteful. Or foolish and deviant. Or heartless and narcissistic. It was the idea that fiction can allow an exploration of what the heart desires and be completely true to the desire itself, and not the need to be validated or seen to be doing whatever. So she has an opportunity to do ‘a big thing’ and she completely disregards it in a faithful pursuit of the momentary compulsion to not drive, to eat, to decorate, to explore someone else’s mind and body. I found that really interesting.
I did not believe the getting fit transformation. As a woman with a stubborn perimenopausal body, I think just how much more graft there is in sorting a body out than July really credits here.
"I was just so captivated by the idea that having the freedom to do as you please can mean NOT doing what you set out to do."
Wow, I love this! I have not thought of it this way but I love this framing. Isn't this so much of life--for women especially? Setting out to do the "should do's" and beating yourself up for not succeeding or doing it fast enough/soon enough, etc.? And then knocking yourself out to do the "should do's" never pausing to ask if it's even what you want anymore, or ever did, or who it's serving, or whose idea it was in the first place.
So much freedom and power in NOT finishing what you set out to do.
Yes, exactly. I found that liberating.
I also like the idea that you can have an obscure adventure on your doorstep. It needn’t cost a fortune - even though hers does.
And I was interested the questions it raises about what constitutes infidelity.
Has anyone read July’s The First Bad Man? It’d be good to chat about too!
I’ve never seen/read any of her other work !
I’m reading The First Bad Man now and it has another interesting female lead who is unafraid of herself and her desires. Worth a read if you enjoyed All fours.
Agreed that the unique thing was having the freedom to not what you set out to do. There’s so much to say about desire here via the narrator or the author herself. Desire seems to be the most fluid of emotional states and the illusion can be fulfilling our desire will bring us ….. ( happiness, satisfaction , sense of self , transformation and on) I try to remember that there is a temporal aspect to desire and that the intensity is before and during and how lasting is the fulfillment of this character and for each of us. It is still fascinating to me this very topic and the experimentation towards changing the social constraints( heterodox, agism, suffocation in disconnected marriages and more) .
Very absorbing novel but the jury is out on whether I will remember it as profound or a good read. I think I’m being challenged by my older age .
I’m interested in what you’re saying here, Christina.
I think that she’s a character who had become accustomed to fulfilling her desires quite easily. She became obsessed with the two characters who did not allow her to do this immediately - or in quite the way she wanted. I like the way the novel shows that desires can only be fulfilled by money to a degree, but money cannot buy compliance from others. This hits her hard and her transformations come as a result of other people’s boundaries.
I enjoyed the way she could suspend her own and everyone else’s expectation of how she would spend her time and how she did this without much guilt.
It is a greedy world, July portrays, with almost everyone out for themselves,
I agree with you that it’s not disrupting societal norms because she was an unusual character - and she’s set up to be experimental and subversive. I’d really like to read something like this about someone who begins really ordinary. I thought it was going to be about someone who submits to momentary, present desires and ignores all sense of past and future and gives full commitment to the present. But she became quite distracted with the future, in the end, and I found that disappointing.
What is it that makes you say you are challenged by your age? If you don’t mind my asking?
Well I’m guessing I’m a lot older , 72, I’m still working and my daughters are millennials . I’m not playing pickle ball and I’m reading Miranda July! Having tweens when I was in perimenopause was something else ! I love to hear women’s perspectives from their present experience at whatever age they are which usually is so different from “looking back” perspectives . Like what you wrote.
Just here to say I agree! I have loved having this convo w women of different ages and hearing their experiences. So gratifying.
Your perspective sounds interesting too.
Some of my friends who were reading and engaged in the 70s have directed me to literature that seems so ahead of its time. I’m dipping in and out of ‘The Wise Wound’ by Shuttle and Redgrave and it feels quite contemporary. Reading outside of our age-bracket is essential!
Totally agree... I feel like I'm having a do what I want summer (as much as possible). Reading this novel has been such a joy and an outlet.
Likability and relatability… As soon as we started this book club I couldn’t help but wonder if readers, even if they maintained sympathy with the narrator through the Davey situationship, would be able to hang on through the graphic sex scene with Audra, the older woman. I wondered if that might be especially tough for straight readers...but maybe queer ones too - particularly ones who are under 50). I wondered if people might feel repulsed at the descriptions or or excited by them? Or neither? How did it hit you?
I was so anxious at the start of that scene that it was going to really just end in an ageist ick (as the kids say) on the part of the narrator. But I was so so so happy about the turn it took and the interior processing we get from the narrator, working THROUGH her own ageism and finding such a deep sensual (if not sexual) experience with Audra. That definitely endeared me more to the narrator or at least to Miranda July herself.
I do think though there is a general uneasiness I still feel about some of the narrator’s own internalized ageism/sexism. The obsession with working out is a good example of this. But it does feel true to me in that I know many people feel that way or struggle along those same lines. I mean, I think we all do to some extent.
It did not occur to me to think much about Claire (I think Lane said this too) - which maybe also says something not so nice about me. Or maybe it just says that I don’t value the kind of monogamy that most people in polite society say they value? I mean, clearly Davey loves Claire and was not planning to leave her and maybe that particular (and peculiar) tryst with our narrator was just something he had to do to keep his own fire alive. I’d get that. I mean, he was a fan of her work before he met her and what they had together meant something pretty specific to him. I don’t have the sense that he’s just out there trying to hook up with [older] women on the regular, you know? Somehow, to me, I guess that lets our narrator off the hook. But I might rethink that if these were people I actually knew and cared about in real life.
Anyway, to me, the narrator is “likable” in that she’s flawed. Like really flawed. And neurotic. I guess maybe I wouldn’t use the word “likable” – too many negative connotations bound up in that word/ idea for women anyway. To me she is a sympathetic character because she’s messy and also she’s interesting! As in, NOT BORING. As in alive! I do always feel drawn to characters who are committed to their own life spark, to their own liberation - both in fiction and in real life, I think.
I do think that the narrator has a transformation throughout the book, if in no other ways, than for the fact that she’d been in a marriage that was lonely and disconnected and she got out of it.
She kind of blew her life up to save herself, I think. And I definitely relate to that.
So much here! I loved the Audra scene -- I thought it was sensuous and hot and totally real. I didn't feel badly for Claire because I think Claire really got exactly what she wanted too -- professional expression and the $20K she and Davey were hoping for. For all we know, they had an open marriage! I thought Claire was a pro, and it felt like there was mutual understanding at play.
"I do think that the narrator has a transformation throughout the book, if in no other ways, than for the fact that she’d been in a marriage that was lonely and disconnected and she got out of it. She kind of blew her life up to save herself, I think. And I definitely relate to that."
Yes, Erin, this is v much me too. Because I ended a one-sided marriage to save myself and blew up my life on many fronts (made many decisions that were not expected/"acceptable" to much of my family/community of origin), I think I relate to this character more than some. I also see that as brave and exciting even though my own experience was not all like hers in the details--bc you risk so much when you're a woman who rebels, esp if you're a mother. And it literally transforms you into a new person--there's a clear before and after.
FWIW I loved the Audra scene! It felt original and totally true and I felt like Audra had the upper hand the whole time. Also felt sexy! Maybe not quite the same way as the Davey scenes…but exciting.
By the end the narrator realizes that Audra has a bed in her house bc she’s hooking up all the time and she’s way more sexually adventurous than the narrator! I think she’s an inspiration and I would def like all women to find their inner Audra.
Like in seeing Audra as desirable I think the narrator could see *her future self as desirable too and not sexually dead but alive. May we all have that as we age!
"Like in seeing Audra as desirable I think the narrator could see *her future self as desirable too and not sexually dead but alive. May we all have that as we age!"
Yes, Lane! 100%
It's very hard for me to comment on the things I really want to comment on without considering them potential spoilers. I think I can safely say that it's easy to love and hate the narrator, to be scornful of her lack of common sense, to feel sympathy with her as she recites her little litanies of daily drudgery (just the food prep was so depressed, how much energy she's giving it). I too have put far too much of my attention on things that while not toxic (healthy food for my family) don't necessarily need to peel the grapes or string the celery (except I did need to string the celery for my daughter). No bento boxes here but it's not from a lack of suggesting them on my part. All of this energy she's putting into telegraphing to others the kind of virtuous mother she is? That feels pretty relatable to when my daughter was a toddler and preschooler. I don't really have a good explanation for why. Claire? That's just so messed up. She makes her dreams come true, out of some sort of need to absolve herself of guilt prematurely? I couldn't decide how I'd feel if I were Claire. 20K is nothing to sneeze at.
"All of this energy she's putting into telegraphing to others the kind of virtuous mother she is." This is relatable to every mother. I think I just realized that I hate school pickup because I feel I have to perform "virtuous mother" while my mom bounces off the walls and generally blows off all the steam she's been working up all day and I have to gather her and her belongings and get her out of the building while performing "virtuous mother." Ha!
I think there is a very interesting Freudian slip here Lane! I'm pretty sure you meant your kid is bouncing off the walls, and not your mom! Hahaha
Ha!! You’re right!
Your mom is a nightmare in school pickup line?! I have to take anxiety medicine because I get what I suppose road rage feels like if you might actually kill someone, but only in afternoon pickup line.
I meant to say my kid bounces off the walls!
I def have anxiety at pickup tho
LMAO, Freudian slip, if those are real. Now I want to know about your mother!
Hahaha
I listen to Bratmobile or Mommy Longlegs really loud in the pickup line. Mommy Longlegs especially has two songs that are balm for my bad attitude. “Yuppie Moms” and ‘Assholes”. I feel like I'm going to be a teenager my entire life and NOT in a good way. I'm not sure there is a good way to feel like that.
https://youtu.be/isu_FaV1Efc
There are times in the book where you can imagine Miranda (the director) filming a scene. I found the departure to the field of women immediately after the narrator and Harris's falling out very touching and it works well on the page and I'd imagine it working well on the screen too. "We were all running to the same field, a place we hadn't discussed but implicitly knew we would meet in when the tipping point tipped. [...] Soon it was just a million women waiting for their mates to call, to be needed, and then to fall into panic and guilt, to be torn, which was our primary state. Start the revolution here, now, in this field? Or drive home and slip back into the fold, use the electric toothbrush, feel grim and trapped? Of course there was no decision to make because we were all already home, not in the field. There was no collective tipping point. Most of us wouldn't do anything very different, ever. Our yearning and quiet rage would be suppressed and seep into our children and they would hate this about us enough to do it a new way."