Not Really A Book Review But Sort Of

I've just had the strangest experience. 

I've been listening to the Miranda July novel, "On All Fours." July is an extremely talented individual, known for her writing,/directing, screenplays, acting...

All of that stuff. Awards have been involved. She's an unwavering feminist and is also known for her refusal to be coy about sex. 
Shall we say. 
And there's a lot of sex in "On All Fours." Lots of different kinds of sex. There is also a great deal of fantasy and gender roles and what equality does and does not look like in relationships. Ageism is explored. The gendering of children is questioned. Dementia, death by suicide, menopause, and different lifestyles are examined. Parenting is big in this book. Also, a medical situation called Fetomaternal Hemorrhage. 
It is a lot. 
And for almost the entire book, I've been going along with it because she's a good writer. She can turn a phrase like nobody's business. She can dive right into common fears and uncomfortable topics without pausing a second on the diving platform. She can push a boundary, y'all, until it's in another state. 
But. The story left me fairly unmoved. I mean, I've felt many of the emotions that the main character in the novel feels. I've even had a few of the experiences in slightly different forms. July, however, takes these things to extremes, leaving me feeling a bit winded and exhausted and strangely uninvolved. Her attitude seems to be- if you're going to do something, just fucking do it. And then explore all aspects of how it makes you feel until you've completely wrung out every bit of what you could learn from the experience, how you can use it in your life and then talk about it to a patient and loving friend until the sun comes up. All of this to such an extreme that I sort of wanted to shout, "Get on some damn medication, woman!" She does go on bio-identical hormones and that is certainly something I can relate to. 

So, yeah. The book is certainly good enough for me to keep listening. July herself narrates it and her narration is rather flat. At first that bothered me but I finally got used to it. So that didn't help but at least if an author reads their own book, you can be pretty sure that you're getting the appropriate emotions through the words. 

And then. In the last half hour of listening, there was a scene that hit me so hard that I stood in my kitchen and sobbed. And it was the simplest scene in the book. I'm not even going to try and describe it because that would not be fair to the novel but I'll just say that it was pretty primal and nothing I'd seen coming. And incredibly intense. 

I've still got another twenty-one minutes left to listen. This whole discussion may become meaningless by the time I finish. I am not going to try and predict how the ultimate ending will go. But I guess what I'm saying is that one scene in the book made it all completely worth reading for me. 

If you've read it, I'd like to hear what you thought. 

I've been domestic today, doing domestic things. I even did a little cleaning of bathrooms as Candie hasn't been here in awhile. I watered some plants, did some laundry, remade the bed with the clean sheets, hemmed some new overalls and picked just a few greens to go into tonight's soup. 

I didn't take one picture today but here's a picture of last night's loaf of oat bran/whole wheat bread. 

Isn't that a pretty little thing? It was good too and will be good tonight with the soup. 

Mr. Moon's been putting a new water pump on a Subaru that he's selling to a friend. 
All day. 

In other words, everything's normal around here. 

Happy Friday, y'all. 

Love...Ms. Moon