Miranda July –
This is an unusual novel, it's about desire, artistic and emotional freedom, deep relationships, ageing and modern family life.
I very much liked it, I loved parts of it, but I kind of didn't love the whole. I think it is an important novel. The title gives the idea that it is a sex novel, but it explores way more.
The main character is a woman in the second half of her forties. She is married to Harris, a nice, reliable guy, with whom she has a non binary child. She is a medium successful/known artist and Harris is in the music business, they have a nice home and don't have to work crazy hours.
She is trying to manage family life and keep pursuing her interests in arts, performance and beauty in her garage studio. We don't really get to know a lot about her artistic projects, but she has an agent and gets appointments with pop stars in the arts and performance world.
She has a work trip to NY coming up and randomly decides to drive from LA instead of flying. She thinks about enjoying this time away from family life, have an adventure. She loves her family over everything but knows that her work is essential for her mental health, allowing her to be a better mother.
Harris, her husband comes up with Drivers and Parkers as a metaphor for people who either are very stable and reliable but kind of boring or very good in special, but exceptional, precise or creative tasks. Clearly he is a Driver and she a Parker. I liked this thought experiment.
"Well, in life there are Parkers and there are Drivers,” he began. “Drivers are able to maintain awareness and engagement even when life is boring. They don’t need applause for every little thing—they can get joy from petting a dog or hanging out with their kid and that’s enough. This kind of person can do cross-country drives
Parkers, on the other hand”—and he looked at me—“need a discrete task that seems impossible, something that takes every bit of focus and for which they might receive applause. ‘Bravo,’ someone might say after they fit the car into an especially tight spot"
She goes for her Drive but ends up having a Parking experience. So she ends up staying in Monrovia, in a cheap motel, half an hour drive from home in LA, where she spontaneously refurbishes the room in ancient French decor, with 20 000 dollars she just earned.
She meets this young man called Davey, who is the reason she stopped her trip. He works at a Hertz auto rental but is a passionate dancer.
She falls in love head over heals with him, they seem to be soulmates, he knows who she is. He too, is married, so they do everything together except having sex. Knowing that eventually they have to separate, they spent every day as if it was the last.
The best of all in this story is the protagonist's best friend Jordi who is always there, available, and with the right words of advice.
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When she goes back to her family she doesn't tell them she didn't go to NY. Readapting to family life is hard for her, she even records a dancing performance for Davey and puts it on Instagram, but he doesn't respond.
She then randomly finds out she is perimenopausal, which makes her Google her symptoms and thinking about how to manage this new epoch in her life. She starts to work out and take care of her body, always thinking about Davey. It troubles her that she doesn't have this romantic exaltation with her husband, because she loves him very deeply especially as they went through the severe health issues of their newborn together, but it is a different kind of love. The childbirth trauma left her with serious flashbacks which come up even years later.
After very much debating with herself she feels she needs fill in the need for living out her sexual desires before hormones and libido vanish. For her mental and physical health and peace of mind. She then happens to find a female lover who kind of also meets that need.
You could say she has three key sexual experiences before starting to come to term with this crisis the perimenopause caused to her. She comes to an arrangement with her husband who get himself a lover as well, they affirm to each other to keep married and even talk to their child about their new special friends.
The novel clearly has some autobiographic elements, Miranda July's best friend is a sculptor as Jordi in the book. She has a non binary child. She is a filmmaker, author and performance artist. I think I will read more by her even though I feel I'm a very different kind of person, more of the Driver's kind, not at all interested in dancing or fancy designer pop stars.
Somehow spoons are a recurring symbol of taking care of someone, in this novel.
I think it's cool how contemporary novels treat modern marriages, normalizing separate bedrooms and having partner to raise the child and lovers on the side. And yes, even in 2025 female desire and menopause are not enough talked about publicly.
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Ultimately, there's not so much an ending or a closure to the novel, although she does come to manage her symptoms and emotions with the right conversations with her woman friends who are going through the same. A couple of years later she even meets Davey again.
It's a smart novel. I personally think I would have liked it more if we would have known more about her work. She comes over as a but posh. But I definitely can imagine being in her shoes and feel the tension that built up and the emotional and moral dilemma.
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