Auto-fictional Instructive Fantasy: Miranda July’s All Fours and Perimenopause in the Self-Help Cultural Mode

Miranda July's autofictional novel All Fours (2024) follows an unnamed American artist in her late-forties embarking on a period of self-discovery as she navigates the hormonal changes and associated symptoms of perimenopause. The New York Times called it the "first great perimenopause novel." Several feminist media scholars have argued that menopause is "having a moment," charting the pronounced increase in discussion of menopause in Anglo-American news media and representations of menopause in popular culture in the early 2020s. All Fours hit shelves when media interest in menopause was at its height. Critical reviews were mixed, but on social media the book took off, quickly developing a reputation as being a dangerous, transgressive book with the potential to change women's lives. This article asks how we can make sense of the popular response to All Fours and what it might contribute to contemporary debates surrounding therapeutic cultures, postfeminism and social media. I argue that the autofictional mode, together with the affordances of social media in a therapeutic culture in which confession is celebrated, led to the book being read by many as an instructional fantasy for navigating perimenopause. I then consider the broader implications of the multi-media autofictional mode as a potential source of feminist solidarity.