Jonna Higgins-Freese's Reviews > All Fours

As so often, I wish I could give different stars in different categories.

July's writing is flawless, propulsive, and laugh out loud funny.

She's telling a story (middle aged mother as erotic protagonist) that is too seldom told.

I read it in one night, staying up until 1:30AM to do so, which for this middled aged mother is a mark of high praise and willingness to set aside other critical tasks that needed to be done early the next morning.

And when I was done I felt like you do after eating too much Halloween candy: it tasted really good at the time, but afterwards you feel kind of empty and sick.

The title of this book could have been _Menopause for POPs (the Privileged One Percent)_.

The protagonist not only has no problems that can't be solved by fucking someone different while having different fantasies, she does not seem to be AWARE of any problems that can't be solved by fucking someone different while having different fantasies.

Actually, she doesn't seem that aware of other people (outside her nuclear family and occasionally her parents) at all, so I suppose it stands to reason that she might not be aware of their problems. That it's not normal to live in a house that's worth $1.8M (an oddly specific number thrown in at random, perhaps to impress us, because financial considerations never enter into her decision-making). That lots of people don't have houses to live in at all. That there are folks whose child care problems are not even partially solved by having a nanny. That, I don't know, climate change is happening.

Maybe part of the radicalism of the book is that it unapologetically puts the problem of women as artists in a misogynistic world front and center. But the problem of wealthy white American women as artists in a misogynistic world is a big problem for those who have it, but not that many have it.