Abra, a renowned American author, discusses the unprecedented impact of her second novel, All Fours. The New York Times hailed it as 'the first great perimenopause novel', igniting a wave of discussion and transformation among female readers. This article delves into the narrative, its controversial reception, and the profound impact it has had on those who dared to embrace its themes.
don’t read books that literally,” says Abra , 49, from Arizona. “I don’t read literature as self-help.” But we’re talking about All Fours , the second novel by the American artist and author, which came out this year, and the way it changed her life. The New York Times called it “the first great perimenopause novel” and “the talk of every group text”, having started “a whisper network of women fantasising about desire and freedom”.
This is a novel that made women blow up their lives; every book group had a friend of a friend whose life had been shaken to its foundations. If you’ve not read the book, the plot can be summarised thus: an artist – wife to a Good Guy, mother to an under-10 – sets off on a road trip and gets distracted by a dancer. She moves into a motel room to stay near him, and remodels it in sumptuous fabrics. She can’t sleep, can’t think, definitely can’t go home, maddened with longing. The libidinous intensity of what’s later floated as a perimenopause effect is magical. I’d never seen that on a page before.Photograph: Joanna Ramirez At the start, online reviewers would refer quite elliptically to its influence: “This book was a lighthouse that called me home”; “This book sorta gave me a mental breakdown”; “This was a stick of dynamite disguised as a book.” I guess when you’re turning your life upside down, you don’t necessarily want to tell the whole internet. Other reviews were stridently angry. Sometimes that was because it was so explicit: “This book made me feel icky. Like, super-duper uncomfortable and nauseous. It’s extremely sexual, graphic, raunchy and disturbing.” But other times you could feel a vibrating, much more fundamental moral fury: how could the protagonist act on her ardour without thinking of the consequences? How could she destroy her happy home, not realise that her actions affected others? The anger was fascinating – readers were responding not as if to a character, but as if it were a manual they were being asked to follo
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