One of the pleasures of All Fours is surprise ... Another is July’s ability to take familiar, everyday experiences and return them strange and new and precisely voiced ... The specificity of observations about the body is staggering. The novel excavates every sensation, every intriguing fold of flesh ... July’s novel is hot and weird and captivating and one of the most entertaining, deranged, and moving depictions of lust and romantic mania I’ve ever read ... In the end, however, it exudes the off-putting assurance of a convert and steers into the lane of self-help. As the narrator’s marriage evolves, the book falls apart. Her despair and obsession — the stuff of great literature — gets diffused into open and honest conversation, scheduling, and lessons learned. Everyone is very mature. This modern solution to the marriage problem may be a good thing in real life, but it just can’t pack the classic novelistic wallop of love and death.
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