All Fours

Miranda July’s 2024 novel All Fours is set in Los Angeles and Monrovia, California, and written from the first-person point of view of an unnamed narrator. The narrator is 45 years old when the novel opens. An artist, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their child. Their quiet life changes when she receives some money and embarks on a road trip across the country but never leaves the Los Angeles area, instead staying in a Monrovia hotel and engaging in an emotional affair with a man. Returning home is difficult for her, and she eventually returns to Monrovia and has sex with a woman. Eventually, the narrator and her husband reach an agreement to open their relationship and see other people. The novel explores themes relating to personal and sexual freedom, self-discovery, and art.

This guide refers to the 2024 Penguin Random House hardback edition of the novel.

Content Warning: The novel references or includes detailed descriptions of death by suicide, addiction, mental health issues, childbirth complications, and the loss of a child.

Plot Summary

The unnamed narrator is a 45-year-old artist and writer who lives with her husband, Harris, and their child, Sam, in Los Angeles, California. She loves her family but spends most of her time locked in her garage studio working on her art projects. However, she has been having trouble engaging in her work. She and Harris have their own bedrooms and have sex only once a week. They maintain a formal dynamic and an orderly, controlled household.

One day, the narrator receives a check for $20,000 from a whiskey company to license a sentence she wrote years earlier. She tells Harris she’s going to use the money to take a two-and-a-half week cross-country road trip to New York. There, she’ll stay in a nice hotel, start writing a new book, and catch up with old friends in the city.

The narrator sets out on her drive. Thirty minutes into the trip, she stops in Monrovia for gas, where she lusts after a young man at the station who cleans her windshield. She encounters him again at a local restaurant and engages him in conversation, learning that his name is Davey Boutrous. The narrator gets back on the road but soon turns around and heads back to Monrovia. She rents Room 321 at the Excelsior Motel.

She cancels her New York plans and decides to stay in Monrovia for the duration of her time away from home. She hires Davey’s wife, Claire, to redecorate Room 321 in the style of a French hotel where she once stayed. Meanwhile, she and Davey secretly spend one-on-one time together. They develop feelings for one another, but Davey refuses to have sex with the narrator because he doesn’t want to sabotage his marriage.

The two spend their time taking walks, holding each other in the narrator’s room, and dancing. One night, the narrator realizes that she’s in love with Davey. At the end of her trip, she feels overwhelmed by emotion when he says they should stop talking once she leaves.

The narrator struggles to readjust to life with Harris and Sam back in LA and then discovers that she’s entering perimenopause and decides that she can’t give up on her last rush of sexual desire for Davey. She gets in shape and choreographs a dance for him, which she records outside the Excelsior and posts on social media for him to see. When she runs into his old lover Audra in town afterward, she learns that he and Claire moved to Sacramento. That night, Audra tells the narrator about her affair with Davey, and she and the narrator have sex.

Over the following months, the narrator’s relationship with Harris changes. The narrator eventually tells Harris that she slept with a woman in Monrovia. Harris adjusts to this information, and the couple decides to open their relationship. He starts dating a woman named Paige, and the narrator starts dating a woman named Kris. She feels happier and more free for a time. However, she’s heartbroken and immobilized when Kris breaks up with her.

The narrator’s agent arranges a meeting between her and a pop star named Arkanda. Like the narrator, Arkanda had a catastrophic experience when she gave birth to her child. The two meet at the Excelsior and share their traumas. The narrator fee

A few years later, the narrator flies to New York. Her new book was published, and she’s going on a book tour. She texts Davey to say hello, and he tells her he’s in the city for a performance and invites her to come see him dance. The narrator is shocked by how many people are in attendance when she arrives at the theater for Davey’s show. She soon realizes that his fans love him as much as she did. The dance transports her, and when it’s over, the narrator feels renewed and grateful.