"Sigh. Some books make me feel positively ancient. Not many. But this is one of them.

Imagine being so evolved that you give birth a baby and immediately begin referring to that baby with the pronouns they/their. Not because the newborn is transgender; in fact, there’s every chance that the infant is cisgender. But because you are so cleverly post-gender and so very modern. And imagine if marriage, to you, is nothing more than a script, divorce reinforces the supremacy of marriage, and life, in effect, ends for women in their 40s when they become perimenopausal. One more thing. Imagine if pulling out a bloody tampon is an act of eroticism.

If you agree with all of this, you are the audience for this book. I’m obviously not. There is some great writing and plot development here. Our narrator goes on a solitary driving trip and ends up in shabby motel just miles from home. She’s got some money to burn, so she redecorates her motel room to the tune of $20k. Her decorator is the wife of a much-younger man she meets at a gas station. She wants to fuck him.So far so good. I can dig that fantasy.

Then she has an emotionally intense affair with said man, in that room. Now we’re in Erica Jong Fear of Flying territory. She eventually realizes that some of this is because of her fading libido. (Some of the best writing is in her recognition of what menopause wrecks on the female body. It’s akin to a nine-year-old looking at the skeleton of a dinosaur and realizing for the first time that she is also going to die someday).

All Four has its possibilities. It’s quirky and audacious and has sparks of insight into the female (dare I say that?) condition and the role of fantasy. But at times, I feel that it tries so hard to be postmodern, relevant, nihilistic, and cool. I guess I’m that dinosaur, still believing that, while erotic candor is good, true connection is even better."

"I didn’t really like her stuff when I was in my 20s but I felt I had to pretend to like it because Brooklyn. Now that I’m in my 40s, I can just admit- I am not this woman’s ideal reader. And that’s my perimenopausal sexual revolution.

"