From global sensation to Wellington reading rooms

Every year brings a handful of “must-read” books. Very few push beyond literary pages to ignite public debate. All Fours by Miranda July has done exactly that — and a year after its release, it continues to unsettle, excite and divide readers.

In Wellington, the novel has found a particularly receptive — and argumentative — audience. It has circulated through book clubs in Newtown and Karori, surfaced in conversations at Unity Books, and sparked heated debate over coffee along Cuba Street.

TIME magazine named July one of the 100 most influential people of 2025. The book has been shortlisted for the National Book Awards and the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and a television adaptation is in development. Yet its greatest impact remains the conversations it has forced — especially among women confronting midlife with few cultural scripts to guide them.

A journey that never leaves the motorway

All Fours centres on an unnamed 45-year-old artist. She is semi-famous, married and a mother. A whiskey company pays her US$20,000 to licence one of her phrases. She decides to drive from Los Angeles to New York as a symbolic reset.

She pulls off the motorway in Monrovia, meets a younger man named Davey, and checks into a motel. One night becomes three weeks. She spends the entire windfall transforming the motel room into a Parisian-style sanctuary.

The road trip collapses. The internal reckoning begins.

Perimenopause at the centre of the story

Back home, her doctor tells her she is in perimenopause. Hormones fluctuate. Desire changes. Her libido, she is told, may soon “fall off a cliff”.

That knowledge propels the novel.

The narrator pursues sex, creativity and freedom with urgency. She weighs “a life spent longing” against “a life that was continually surprising”. July treats sex not as spectacle, but as inquiry. Ageing, ambition, motherhood, marriage and mortality run through the book.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, where menopause remains under-discussed in workplaces and healthcare settings, that candour resonates deeply. According to New Zealand research, many women report delayed diagnosis and limited clinical support during perimenopause. July’s novel places that experience front and centre — without euphemism.

Why critics called it revolutionary

On release, All Fours received glowing reviews. The New York Times described it as “the first great perimenopause novel”. New York Magazine called it “a spectacularly horny story about pursuing sexual and creative freedom”.

The Washington Post predicted its cultural reach, suggesting the book could rally a generation of women. That prediction now feels conservative.

July has spoken openly about her motivation. “If men had this huge change, it would be considered monumental,” she told The Guardian. “There would be rituals. There’d be holidays.”

Treena Orchard, associate professor at Western University in Canada, recently presented a paper on All Fours at the Contemporary Women’s Writing Association conference. She argues the novel reframes midlife as a culturally significant rite of passage. “That is political,” she told the BBC. “That is radical.”

Sex, symbolism and the motel room

The erotic content in All Fours is explicit and sustained. Desire dominates the narrative. One tampon-related scene has become notorious. July refuses comfort. She leans into embarrassment and excess.

The motel room itself functions as metaphor. Room 321 becomes a modern “Room of One’s Own”, echoing Virginia Woolf. It is a space free from domestic obligation, where the narrator experiments sexually and creatively.

Later, it becomes a gathering place, where friends discuss menopause and libido openly — a fictional version of conversations now emerging in Wellington salons, book events and festival panels.

The readers who felt seen

On July’s Substack, women describe the book as life-changing. Some ended marriages. Others left jobs. Many say they felt less alone and less “crazy”. Reader-organised meet-ups have formed in cities across Europe and North America.

Younger readers are engaging too. Mia Morongell, 24, says the book transcends age. She calls its power “shamelessness”. A Simone de Beauvoir line quoted in the novel stayed with her: “You can’t have everything you want but you can want everything you want.”

In Wellington, that line has been shared across reading groups and social media threads. The city’s strong literary culture — shaped by events like the Wellington Writers Festival and Verb Festival — has provided fertile ground for the novel’s ideas.

Why some Wellington readers recoiled

Not everyone embraced All Fours. Goodreads gives it an average rating of 3.5 stars. One-star reviews describe it as “cringey”, “icky” and “unrelatable”.

Critics object to the narrator’s privilege. Few people can afford to abandon work, childcare and responsibility for weeks. Others dislike her moral choices, including the affair with a younger man and the move toward an open marriage.

Some readers simply found the narrator unbearable. She is described as narcissistic, immature and exhausting. For them, the book crossed from honesty into self-indulgence.

Yet even detractors concede its cultural impact. As one Wellington book club member put it, “I hated it — but I couldn’t stop talking about it.”

Crisis or cultural correction?

Treena Orchard resists framing All Fours as a midlife crisis novel. The narrator does not flee change. She interrogates it. She seeks medical advice. She speaks openly with friends. She advocates for herself.

That distinction matters. It reframes midlife not as collapse, but as engagement.

With the paperback now available in New Zealand bookshops, debate around All Fours is likely to intensify. In Wellington — a city that values fearless art, difficult conversations and literary risk — that feels inevitable.

Miranda July has not written a novel designed to comfort. She has written one that insists on being confronted.