In the powdery warmth of the bathroom I felt euphoric. Being alone suddenly felt wild. I locked the door and made a series of involuntary, baroque gestures in the mirror. I waved manically at myself and contorted my face into hideous, unlovable expressions. I washed my hands as if they were children, cradling one and then the other. I was experiencing a paroxyms of selfhood. The scientific name for this spasm is The Last Hurrah. The feeling was quickly spent. I dried my hands on a tiny blue towel and walked back to the bedroom.
From Something That Needs Nothing in No One Belongs Here More Than You (73)
Scribner, 2008 (originally published 2007)
I’ve always been a big fan of Miranda July and was thrilled to read her new book, All Fours, which releases on May 14. In both the excerpt above and throughout her new book, July’s writing shines in the descriptions and details of what happens on the inside — a bathroom, a motel room, a relationship, the narrator’s head.
Overall, All Fours is about desire and freedom. Books like this should be their own genre, and they’re exactly what I like to read. Weird, artsy, middle-aged women who still don’t quite have it all figured out. A woman who makes unconventional decisions — but why not? What else should she be doing in this world? Of course, it’s confusing. Marriage, love, lust, all the feelings that can happen so abruptly in the most mundane or absurd of circumstances yet change everything. Our heroine is obsessive, questioning her own reality (or sanity?) — but she knows it’s impossible to evade her own thoughts and feelings. How can one compromise when there is so much work to be done, so much life to experience? All of this while reckoning with motherhood, menopause, her work, and the mess of life. Frank yet poetic and sexy, the book reads like you’re talking with your best friend and she really, really gets it.
Releases on May 14. Pre-order here.
Read-alikes:
Leonora Carrington,The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington
Labyrinth Literature 