Well, this is a surprise. When I picked up this book I did not expect it to be my first recommendation for a title that mid-life moms should read to feel seen. But nevertheless, here it is. It’s certainly not for everyone. But if your day-to-day is spent serving others and meeting their needs, you’ll find a lot in common with July’s main character, even if you choose a different way to escape your own feelings of imprisonment.
Depending on your level of comfort with female sexuality, this book could be a different kind of read for you. It’s extremely real, ways that are both uncomfortable and refreshing. I cannot tell you how much I wish I had read this book when I was in my 30s, when my body, and life, and my family grew increasingly unfamiliar to me, and there were days that I just wanted to take off in the car and drive…
Which brings us to-
The Question Put Forth at the Beginning of the Book: Are you a Parker or a Driver?
The 45-year-old female narrator’s husband, Harris, poses this idea to his wife during a dinner party conversation in the second chapter: “Well, in life there are Parkers and there are Drivers”
- “Drivers are able to maintain awareness and engagement even when life is boring. They don’t need applause for every little thing—they can get joy from petting a dog or hanging out with their kid and that’s enough. This kind of person can do cross-country drives.”
- “Parkers, on the other hand…need a discrete task that seems impossible, something that takes every bit of focus and for which they might receive applause…the rest of the time they’re bored and fundamentally kind of disappointed. (Italics in original). A Parker can’t drive across the country. But Parkers are good in emergencies.”
“You can’t change…” he finishes.
When the narrator hears this, she decides to prove that she can be a Driver (her husband has pretty firmly situated her in the Parking camp) and plans to drive across the country from California to New York. It takes her about 30 minutes into the trip to realize that she’s a Parker after all – she parks at a motel in a nearby town and begins a new life.
This is just the first of many choices she makes that illustrate her internal battle between who she is and who she wants to be. Each time we expect her to head in one direction, she finds an alternate path, like an alternate 1985 kind of universe, that leads to an unexpected outcome.
Why This Book Meant Something to Me
I think Harris has it all wrong. Not about Parkers and Drivers – we all certainly know many of each. But about the fact that you can’t change. In my late 30s, I realized that I was perhaps a Driver who had spent too much time Parking – looking for attention and excitement, dealing with the constant emergencies of parenting.
In my life, the feeling of “parking” was not a way of being, but a blip in an otherwise open-road existence. Remember in The Holiday when Eli Wallach’s character tells Kate Winslet’s character “You I can tell are a leading lady, but for some reason you’re behaving like the best friend?” It’s like that. I was a Driver behaving like a Parker. I’m really good on a road trip. But in my “parking” days, the thought of driving on a road trip gave me a panic attack.
When the narrator redecorates a motel room in order to have a place of her own, has an intimate and deceptive emotional affair, and then a physical one, I get it. Her desire to find someone else who will tell her who she is, is palpable. I can remember the same desire, the same wish that someone else could remind me of who I was. Spoiler: they can’t.
I wouldn’t call this book enjoyable to read. What’s the word? Educational, maybe. Still, I found it hard to put it down. It was hard to figure out what she would do next, and the hope of reading something even more sensational in the next chapter kept me going.
A Bold but Telling Choice: The 45-year-old Narrator is Not Named
Yep – 326 pages and she is never named! It’s a daring choice for an author. But here it makes sense. After all, the book is one big identity crisis. Have you ever felt like no one knew who you were?
The lack of a name makes our connection with her more intimate. July’s narrator is someone who many of us can connect with on some level. She doesn’t like dogs. She loves her child so much that at times it seems she wants them to share the same body. Other times she spends days away from her child and we don’t hear a word about them. She’s waiting to be seen, to be noticed, to be recognized. And the person who sees her for exactly who she is – a Parker – is the husband from whom she is continually distant: “Harris and I are more formal, like two diplomats who aren’t sure if the other one has poisoned our drink. Forever thirsty but forever wanting the other one to take the first sip.”
Like a gut-punch, right? It was for me. I thought she was describing my marriage.
My Favorite Part
My favorite part of the book is when the narrator “open sources” information on perimenopause, midlife, relationship, and family. She holds a series of interviews with friends and people she knows about how they handle their relationships, and what they really want out of life. It was an “Oh shit,” kind of moment for me. The author, Miranda July, went through perimenopause, and said openly that the book is close to life (though maintains that it is fiction). But she also did multiple interviews with other women who have gone through this stage of life, interviews that I’m sure influenced the “open-sourcing” that the narrator does late in the book.
My “oh shit” moment came when I thought, what if I had realized in the moment that other women felt this way too? What if I had been brave enough to admit it to a friend? That’s the value of All Fours for me. It’s the friend who will admit to you their struggles with midlife, parenting, career, and perimenopause. It’s not that you will make the choices that the narrator makes, but it’s that you will see your choices for what they are: options. You can be the Parker or the Driver. Despite what her husband says, I think that you can change.
Reasons You Might Not Love This Book
By all accounts it’s raw and weird and gritty. George Saunders gave it a cover blurb, and that says something. At times it’s only tangentially tethered to real life. You might find yourself thinking, “This would never happen!” over and over again. There are a few things that might turn you off or make you a bit too uncomfy to keep going. Here they are:
- The New York Times called it “The First Great Perimenopause Novel.” Maybe, like me you think, Great, we’ve got one. And we’ve got a long way to go. The connection between the fact that the narrator is going through perimenopause and her behaviors is not explicitly made, nor should it be, necessarily. But she is learning about and fearing perimenopause more than experiencing it.
- The sex is descriptive, real, not always monogamous, and generally unromantic.
- You won’t agree with all of her choices. If you have a hard time reading characters who make choices that are different from the ones you might make (and for a long time, I did!) this book might not be for you.
- She’s a parent, but does little parenting in the book, and feels a bit disassociated from her kid.
- Most of the main characters in this book are extremely privileged. The narrator really doesn’t work during the entire time period of the book.
Fierce Tit Recommendation
Read this, preferably in your 30s. You’ll remember it when your own mind and heart begin to go awry. If you read it in your 40s, there may still be time. If you’re in your 50s or later, you’ll have an opportunity to giggle over the might-have-beens of your past.