The All Fours Effect

Marisa Meltzer
An open book with colorful stars and bursts emerging from its pages.
  • Talks and Ideas
  • all about women
  • Run time: 60 minutes Subject to change

It’s the book that detonated marriages, friendships and group chats. Let’s discuss.

Miranda July’s “great perimenopause novel” sparked walkouts, break-ups and furious book clubs. This panel will unpack how and why it hits real-world nerves.

All Fours didn’t just make waves, it detonated something. When the notoriously best-selling author’s latest release hit bookshelves in 2024, it was quickly lauded by The New York Times as “the first great perimenopause novel”. 

Whispered about in group chats everywhere, this fever-dream story of a woman who abandons routine suburban life for a reckless road trip and an extramarital affair has become something of a cultural Rorschach test. 

For some, it’s liberation. For others, chaos. Book clubs crumbled. Marriages cracked. Women re-examined their desires, their compromises and their lives.

What happens when fiction feels like a dare? When a story becomes a catalyst? And why did this novel — playful, surreal and feral in its honesty — strike nerves so deeply?

Join a distinguished panel of critics, writers and devoted (or divided) readers as they dissect “The All Fours Effect” — the art, the uproar and the questions we can’t un-ask.

Please note: This is a deep dive into Miranda July’s book — Miranda July not included.

Sydney Opera House Presents

Event details

The novel is a funny, sexy and loving portrait of a forty-five-year-old woman’s journey to becoming herself, to accepting sexual freedom and to lifting up the women around her in the process.

Chicago Review of Books

All About Women Festival Pass

Book three or more events from all about women and save. Available from 9am, Thursday 15 January 2026.

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