Book Club Meets: Desire, hormones, and tampons, with Miranda July

0:00I stood holding the note with that funny little abandoned feeling one gets a million times a day in a domestic setting. Welcome to the Happy Place Book Club with me, Fern Cotton. Not like I need to dish with my husband about every little thing. Today, All Fours by Miranda July. Harris and I are more formal, like two diplomats who aren't sure if the other one has poisoned our drink. Forever thirsty, but forever wanting the other one to take the first sip. You go. No, you go ahead. No, no, please, after you. This sort of walking on eggshells might sound stressful, but I was pretty sure we would have the last laugh.

0:36When everyone else was sick to death of each other, we'd be just breaking through, having our honeymoon, probably in our 60s. My friend Cassie says, love you, every time she gets off the phone with her husband. Whenever I overhear this, I'm completely mortified for her. But I do love him, she says. You were just talking about how miserable and stuck you felt. Then she kind of laughs as if it's all out of her hands. I don't expect her to be honest with her husband, but at least come clean with me. Other people's relationships never make any sense. Once I got my best friend Jordi to record a casual conversation between her wife and her.

1:17Jordi is a brilliant sculptor who can convincingly theorize about anything, but in this conversation she barely said a word while her wife ranted about the idiocy of a popular TV show. Only occasionally would Jordi murmur a question. Mostly she just giggled at all the things Mel said. I thought she might be embarrassed, but she wasn't. I love how sure of herself Mel is. I love opinionated people, like you. This was so flattering that I instantly warmed up to their dynamic. That show really is flawed, I said. Mel nailed it. My friends are always obliging me with ephemera like this. Screenshots of sexts, emails to their mothers, because I'm forever wanting to know what it feels like to be other people.

2:02What were we all doing? What the hell was going on here on Earth? Of course, none of these artifacts really amounted to anything. It was like trying to grab smoke by its handle. What handle? This is where we find our protagonist at the beginning of Miranda July's All Fours. She's at a point in her life where she's full of confusion and curiosity about parenting, marriage, menopause and sexuality. She is ready for reinvention. She tells her husband and child she plans to drive cross-country from LA to New York but just half an hour after leaving them at home she turns off the freeway and then finds herself in a random motel where she creates a completely different life to the one she's currently leading.

2:50This book is like nothing I've ever read before and I think that's what grabbed me. I think it's quite hard to write a unique book these days because so many books have been written over the years but this feels like a very different angle from which to look at being a woman of a certain age going through things like perimenopause and menopause and peeling back layers to discover who you are and looking at your own boundaries and why they're there I found it utterly liberating to read It's so raw and it's so unfiltered, which I'm so intrigued about in terms of the writing process and the courage it takes to just write freely without worrying what your reader might assume or think about you.

3:38It's astonishing and at times sort of confronting and oh, it's just magical. And you guys have really big feelings about this book too. I bloody love it when you get involved with our book club chats. Here's Jojo. I loved this book. I didn't really know what to expect when I started reading it. I'm definitely perimenopausal, so it was very apt for me to read at this time. I mean, the main character, I just, well, I felt like Miranda July 1st was writing from inside my own head, which was a little unnerving at times because, I mean, gosh, the main character's unhinged behaviour, like, so relatable.

4:17And it definitely made me feel in slightly better company about some of my own quite unhinged choices I've made recently. But no, it was brilliant. I mean, some of the parts were just like literally laugh and laugh funny, but also high-prime, my hands cringe. I mean, it's just so good. I might have to read it again, actually. I loved it. Oh, me too, Jojo. I would happily read it again. And I'm with you. I'm unhinged too. All the way. Oh, it's such a good book. This is what Michelle thought of All fours. I enjoyed the main character and all the complexity she's going through as a working mother and a perimenopausal woman, particularly for myself as I'm 62.

4:57I really enjoyed the honesty of the sexual fantasies played out by the two main characters and that they were raw, exciting, yet in a beautiful safe space gave it, in my opinion, more credence. I love that she refers to her young child as they, why assume they relate to binary constraints, norms. This is not my normal read. However, I'm so pleased to have come across an exciting new author for me, whose books I definitely look out for again. Oh, I love that, Michelle. I mean, that's exactly what the Happy Place Book Club is, well, hopefully all about, introducing you, well, all of us, to books you might not necessarily pick up.

5:38And what a beautifully written review, Michelle. We love you. Thank you so much for that. All right, let's get to Miranda then, because I was buzzing to talk to her. What a treat. This is the perk of my job that I get to actually quiz the people that I'm fascinated about. This is going to be such a wild ride. There's chat about hormones fluctuating. There's fierce desire. And of course, if you've already read the book, you'll know there's a tampon. The market's uncertain. Revenue's tied and hiring on hold. That's why results-driven companies are using Upwork to keep work moving. Go to Upwork.com today and start hiring proven freelance talent fast.

6:19No bulky overhead. No rigid long-term contracts. Just the right expert right when you need them. Work smarter and faster with Upwork. Go to Upwork.com now and find your freelance expert. That's U-P-W-O-R-K dot com. Post a job for free and get started today. At Walgreens, we know flu season can feel a little chaotic. So we're going to give you our flu info. In a meditation. Keeping you calm. Just like a certified Walgreens pharmacist will do if you're a little, little nervous. So walk in or schedule an appointment and Walgreens will handle the rest. That's the human kind of help. Walgreens. Vaccine subject to availability.

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7:09Right, are you ready? Here's the show.

7:33Hello, Miranda. It's so lovely to talk to you today. Yeah. Good morning. You're in Los Angeles. It's the morning time. Is it LA you're in? Yeah. A nice sunny morning? No. Oh. A shit morning in LA. But we like that here. I do. No, we don't. We just want sun and we don't ever get it. But look, I'm so thrilled to talk to you. All Fours is just the most unique book. This is our October Happy Place Book Club pick, which we're just all loving. I raced through it so quickly, I literally couldn't put the book down. The one thing that sort of strikes me is that it is utterly unique, which I think is so rare slash impossible to achieve in this day and age, where the book market is so oversaturated, which is no bad thing.

8:23We all love reading. But this book stands out as something completely of its own. It's in its own league, its own lane over here doing its thing. Did you set out to do that? What was the thinking at the start of this project? Yeah, no, I did see space. I did see room for this book. And I didn't know if it was just that I was ill read, that there seemed to be kind of a missing book or a whole bunch of missing books. And the main thing was I was kind of experiencing this like not matching up of my inner experience and the description of life for me as a woman in the middle of her life. The description of that life didn't connect with what I was feeling or with what my friends were feeling.

9:18And that's such a strange feeling because, of course, you assume you're wrong, right? Like you're just overthinking it or not accepting like the terms of reality, like you're getting older or whatever. You know, like no one else historically, it's not a big deal what's happening now. It's certainly not exciting, which was one thing that I was kind of feeling like this is really quite wild, kind of psychedelic what's going on here. At this age, I was 45 when I started writing the book. And if I just felt that alone, and I have sometimes had psychedelic experiences that were just me. But this is one of those things where I would just like, look at another woman at a at a school function, my age, and just the look in each other's eyes was this kind of like, underground network, like, yep, like, here we are doing this one thing and on the other hand it's wild shit um and we're there's a fair amount of acting happening right now and acting as if the wild shit is like very very bad and i think that was the the sort of premise of the book that was sort of like well why is it bad why are all the things that I'm feeling, all the desires and the kind of out of step with the structures that I've created, why is that necessarily bad and shameful and secret if it's so widespread?

11:08Of course, I didn't actually know. I'm now speaking with some hindsight because the book's out. This was a bit more like grandiosity on my part for the four years of writing it. Well, it speaks to so many people because of everything you've just said. I'm in the thick of what you're describing. I'm 43 and I've questioned so much of what I've imbibed over the years, certainly about perimenopause and just aging in general. And it again, hasn't aligned. And I feel like this is one of the most exciting parts of my life possible. I feel like all of the layers are finally sort of coming off and I'm working out who I actually am.

11:55And it's leading to all sorts of weirdness and wonder and excitement and discovery. And that's why this book was just chiming with me page after page, because I feel liberated. I don't feel, I think most of the stuff that I've read about perimenopause certainly has been quite depressing and to excuse the pun, dry. And I don't feel like that. I don't feel like that at all. And you're talking about, I mean, when you touch on menopause in the book and you talk about everything that we've just discussed, it doesn't feel like this sort of heavy topic that we've got to dread this era of our life. It feels so expansive.

12:41And I've not read anything like that before. It doesn't exist. Yeah. I mean, I guess it's like if you presume that the second half of a woman's life is important or has any value, then this transitional time would be really important. It would be the equivalent of when you were, you know, like a teenager or something and everyone is really interested in what, you know, like, what will the child's calling be? What will they, you know, like, what kind of person will they, are they turning into a person with integrity and bravery and, you know, manners and whatever? And like, so transitional periods are, besides being like awkward and we give that person sort of a wide berth, you know, like they're going to act a little erratic because they're truly going through something really important, which is coming into their personhood.

13:44I began to think like, yeah, if the second half matters, then this time really is sort of sacred. I mean, this is a time where you're kind of defining the terms now that you've got your head on your shoulders. You know what I mean? Like you didn't really when you were starting out and making that life, you were understandably following a lot of other people that had come before you and the structures that were kind of offered to you. And now you have a better, more specific sense of who you actually are and what you might actually want to do here. And I think the hormones, and I speak as a doctor here, just kidding, I'm not a doctor.

14:33But we'll believe anything you say. Yeah. The hormones support that. I mean, I find like, yes, you can think of it as a very dark time if the thing you're trying to maintain is a death grip on life exactly as it was, or exactly as you pictured, then yes, having these fluctuations, you know, it's going to unmoor you and you're going to have to work extra hard to maintain, you know, this edifice of like sameness. But if instead, you know, you think there is a purpose to that and there's actually something powerful in changing and maybe even rapid change or even chaotic change it isn't necessarily bad yeah I mean I love thinking I love the thought of it being um like looking back to the teenage years you know we're going through a change as important as that but with wisdom there's nothing bad about that like that that makes me feel excited I want to change and grow and have different perspectives and experience different things.

15:48I don't want to be stuck or stagnant. So I like that thought of imagining the exact transition we went through in the teen years, but with that wisdom. But one of the things that I found so liberating to read about was the sort of element of desire. I don't believe there's much room for women of a certain age, but certainly mothers and wives, you know, in that sort of family setup, there's no room for desires. We don't talk about it. I think most of us probably mentally have denied ourselves even the pleasure of having desires, just even in our own minds. Why did it feel important to dive into that topic for you?

16:34Yeah, I mean, I guess I saw desire as the part of myself that hadn't gotten fed. A lot of parts of me were well fed. I had really dove into. But I was, of course, as we all are, blind to what I wasn't seeing to. And I think that often does come out lustfully because we're hungry, you know, like it's like it's actual physical, like it's not a mental, super logical thing. It's like, I really just want and maybe even need this food. And the food might actually be something sort of subtle, which is perhaps there's someone who sees a certain thing in you that no one in the life that you've created sees.

17:28So of course, to be hungry for that person and for it to seem all about that person, that's natural. And I don't even think really wrong, Like that is a significant person who saw you at that time. It doesn't mean that's your next partner for life. Like that's, you know, that's almost like this magical player, you know, who's there to upset things. And I guess, of course, to sort of patriarchal structures and the family structure, that would seem really scary. And so you'd want to vilify that. But if, for example, if you were a mother, and you thought, wow, this lustful figure sees a part of me that actually I want to see myself, I would love my child.

18:24to see this part of myself, you know, like, whatever it is, it's not that part is not inherently, like, dirty or something, you know, it just has a lot of energy in it, because it hasn't happened, it hasn't had that much space. And I think, you know, in the book, she begins to realize, like, the deceit that she's pulling is also like, she's deceiving, she's depriving her child of her full self, you know, and that if we want to put it into terms that are acceptable to us as like good women, you know, that feels that feels pretty wrong. Like that wasn't the plan. You know, that wasn't what you intended to do.

19:07But here you find yourself trying to model for someone like how you're trying to tell them, like, be yourself, even when other people are telling you that that's not okay you know and so you have you know you're suddenly in a pinch like how how do I do that um and yeah so I I mean that's getting a little bit into like the book the book does encompass that but I realized like I've kept thinking about it all, you know? Yeah. It's funny. I actually, there's an odd thing about writing a book that's so close to the bone and yet still fiction and that it's, it was sort of ahead of me. And now I'm almost, it's almost like I could write the same book, but more granularly.

20:04My therapist actually said at one point I was just saying something, kind of flapping my wings, you know at loose ends and she was like there's this book that I think you really might like it might connect with you at this time it's called all fours I'm random July and I was like I know I know it seems it seems like I would have a handle on all this you know that's so good I love it I I I'm just so obsessed with everything you've just said because we don't talk about this shit and I think for for women and specifically mothers obviously there is so much and this is just sort of like some sort of disclaimer I feel I need to say but when you have kids I've got kids you do obviously gain so much and it's so beautiful and life-affirming etc but of course you lose parts of yourself of course there there's compromise and there's parts of you that get completely squashed and parts of you that seemingly sort of die for a bit and I absolutely understand what you're saying about somebody else whether it's kind of it could even be someone on a tv show I don't think it's always necessarily someone in real life but something that you watch that awakens something in you that has partially wilted for me I think I often um I'm quite sort of driven I like forward motion and I can get into a bit of a masculine energy thing where I'm like this and that's happening next and we're doing this and trying to kind of keep the chaos at bay and I really have to remind myself to keep a check on how am I cultivating that really lovely sort of playful feminine energy bit that sometimes just gets parked for like I was going to say months It's probably years at a time in certain phases of parenting.

21:58And what can awaken that? And like you say, if it involves some sort of desire, what is the problem in that? To bring yourself fully back as much as you can and to feel as alive, I think, as you fully can. there is absolutely nothing wrong with that but we've been and perhaps it is a sort of patriarchal issue that we've been condemned to never even have thoughts about anything other than the family setup that we're in it's really stifling yeah and the funny thing is like I actually don't think I think following that feeling that you talked about, that kind of in your body more feeling rather than driven, I think it's actually a safe energy.

22:50It's regarded as dangerous, and I think in some ways I can see how it would be threatening to some people. but I know that I'm a safer person to myself and certainly to the people around me when I know what my body feels. And it often is like you hear a song, right? And it just strikes you and you have like tears in your eyes suddenly, right? And oh, what a basket case. She falls apart at a song. You know, no, like that moment is actually your body kind of coming up and being like, I'm here. I feel something. And really actually just in the last couple months, because I get tearful quite easily.

23:44It's almost like a joke. I think it was a joke in a way in my household that I'm not in anymore. Like, oh, mama's crying. And now so much of my kind of daily practice for myself is moving from my head, which is this very plan making, organizational, very successful, the ambitious part of myself, creative to my body and my heart. And in some ways, now I know when I get a little tearful, I'm like, ooh, that's a shortcut. If I go with that and be like, oh, what is that feeling? It's like a little highway to my body. And then the opposite of that is like you know wiping the tears away and going like oh sorry about that yeah well we don't let ourselves feel anything we I think we try and numb everything constantly whether it's with something pleasurable or some sort of self-flagellation we don't let ourselves just feel the thing we deny ourselves a bit constantly and even this like this conversation um I'm realizing most of the things that I'm saying or thinking are not new to me.

25:09Like certainly we're not the first people to say like, it's healthy to cry. Let those feelings out. I don't think we are. Like you heard it here first, guys. Exclusive. But, you know, actually those things became kind of, well, first of all, I think very wise things, you often do come to them like, oh, this is what they meant in that thing that I read and that whatever. It could be something that you heard a million times in yoga class and then you actually did it for the first time and you're like, oh, I wasn't really doing it before. And so to belittle that in favor of like, oh, I have to have originated some brand new idea.

25:57Like, really? Like that, that's, that's so conquering. Like, oh, I want to be the first to have invented tears are okay. You know, rather than, like, you're not the first person to be in a body. And it's quite, like, you shouldn't underestimate the power of all the also cliche forces encouraging you towards the opposite, you know, towards keeping things moving smoothly. Like that is so powerful that, of course, that will be belittled. You will even do it in your own head. You will even do it to other women. You will do it perhaps even to this program that you're listening to, you know, But you sort of might ask yourself, why?

26:47Like, who benefits from things moving smoothly?

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27:26It's so interesting because if we go back to the sort of desire element of this conversation, the other part of it is space. Because in the book, the protagonist is going to set off on this huge journey, looking at this sort of forward motion, you think, oh, yeah, she's really deserving of that. She's a mom. She's a wife. She needs space. She wants to go on this big journey. And then spoiler alert for anyone that hasn't read the book yet. And hopefully you are really long with us or you've already read it. But if you haven't, she doesn't make it all the way from LA to New York. She ends up in sort of the neighboring town in a motel and just parks herself there for quite some time.

28:06And that's where I think many of us readers will get a spark of judgment of like well who does she think she is stopping there when she's got a kid and a husband and she's going to stay in a motel it's really confronting a lot of the stuff you're writing in the best possible way that we can actually sit and go why am I judging that why would it have been okay to do the journey bit and have all those experiences but not stay still in a motel for a few weeks such a good point right I think we kind of catch ourselves in those judgments. Yeah, right. Like the inner journey isn't allowed. You have to have this sort of evidence of traveling, of kind of expansion, conquering the country.

28:52Yeah. I loved that. That was like a bit that stood out so massively for me because I really caught myself getting judgmental and I was like, why am I judging the fact that she's decided to stay in a motel for a few weeks. Like, why not? Right. No, I had, I mean, to the very end of the process of writing the book when the, at the very end, they sort of fact check it essentially. And like something wasn't lining up in terms of the days that she was at the motel. There were like more days. And I kept saying that she was gone for two weeks. And that's the amount of time in my family structure that one could be gone with, like, that was sort of the limit, you know?

29:35And they were like, well, it's just more days than that, you know? Like, if we map it out and someone mapped out all the things she does, and here's a morning, here's a night, like, and I was like, okay, well, two and a half weeks, but that's the absolute limit because, you know, the child. And then they came back to me and they're like, uh, it just, I know, you know, this is my job, forgive me but it still doesn't make sense and so I it there is a sort of vague like sometimes she says three weeks in certain contexts um and then other times she says more than two weeks you know like so my own anxiety about this fictional funny yeah I love that and part one is one of the hottest sexiest things I've ever read and there's no sex it's amazing how you've done that It was just sort of a masterclass in how to keep everybody just on the edge of your seat, waiting to see what was going to happen.

30:37Again, slight spoiler alerts for anyone that's not got to this part of the book. One of the most interesting bits that me and many of my friends have discussed is the tampon moment. And again, it was so interesting because it broke down so many barriers that we experience when it comes to menstruating. and that we've been conditioned to feel a level of shame about it, that it's all got to be extremely secretive and it's this sort of weird little dirty thing that happens once a month that we have to conceal from the outside world. And the fact that you brought that into this sort of hot and loaded moment was just astonishing.

31:17And it kind of once again was quite confronting for me to read because I was like, this is so sexy, But why was my initial reaction like, oh, my God, what's going on? He's taking a tampon out. And I think when me and my friends were discussing it, it's the level of intimacy that makes it so incredible that, you know, the protagonist has never let anybody remove a tampon before for her. That hasn't happened. So although there wasn't any sort of like hot sex, like, you know, they're both fully clothed apart from her having her trousers down, you know, to take the tampon out. There's something so incredibly sort of sensual about it, as well as it being really hot.

32:04How did that idea come to you? And why did that, because I'm sure there were moments where, you know, as well as addressing menopause and perimenopause, you want to look at the shame we feel around periods and menstruating and how to sort of break down those barriers. Yeah, you know, I read a, okay, so the book, Call Me By Your Name, not the movie, but in the book, or maybe, maybe there were two books and it was in the second one. there's a scene where it's these two men in love and there's a scene where one of the men young the younger guy is taking a shit and the and the other guy his lover just puts his hand on his stomach while he's doing that and feels and it's like feels what's happening And it's and I could imagine like anyways, I'll just say when I read that, I felt really sad.

33:14I was like, that's it's not that I exactly want to do that. It's just to know two people have been that intimate. And maybe I never will. Like, well, I, well, I, like, here we are on earth, it seems like worthwhile to be so vulnerable, you know, and we have these bodies and, and to only interact in certain ways, you know, so that I've, I had lived with that for a while. And just, in fact, I talked about it with a few people like that, that book would come up and we'd be like, oh, wait, not the movie, but in the book, there's the scene and they'd go, yeah, yeah. And it was the same like, sadness, you know, erotic and there's, yeah, but, but, and, and so I think I just not super consciously, like by the time I'd, um, was writing my tampon scene.

34:23I think I'd kind of forgotten that book. But I've since remembered like, oh, this is my version of that, like something where they're so close in a way that you never thought and never even wanted. But now that it's happening, you can feel how alone you've been your whole life, alone with your period, alone with the sort of ugliness around what the body does or shame, you know, and to have someone just right there with you, that to me seemed like, well, if we're writing fantasy, you know, essentially, like when you're writing sex, like that's, I wanted to go all the way into the fantasy. It's not just like he, just fucks her you know it's like um to access yeah that that that longing yeah that's why I love that part one of the books so much because every sex scene that I've ever read in fiction specifically I feel like they're all getting so the same these days like the same sort of language is used like stuff that makes me feel a bit um a bit like cringy I don't know it doesn't feel sexy to me anymore because I've read all the same phrases like like he touched her sex or he pushed this into there and it's all just like oh I don't that's not really doing it for me whereas this I was just I don't know I was just sort of overwhelmingly tantalizing and amazing and it's just so clever how you've articulated it I wonder because also you've obviously written and directed and been in films what is easier in terms of translating that feeling I think a sex scene in a book or a film is quite a good sort of example because it's about feeling or if it's longing you know sometimes I've written lots of non-fiction books but I've written one fiction and the thing that I found the most difficult was in my head it was so fully formed and I was conjure it up but that weird little pocket of space between your head and your laptop and trying to channel it through so on the page it's exactly what you felt so that other people can feel it it's so hard did you find that more challenging than for instance making a film or directing a film?

36:59Well, it helped that I had taken notes for a long time. And I, when I would have those feelings, I actually would write it down as soon as I could. So when I was writing things, I was going back through years and finding these little pieces of things that, you know, maybe I was changing everything around them. But there was still a few words, a few things that anchored me, as you say, to that, to what you felt in your body. So I don't think that's the only way, but that's something kind of unique to this book for me is that I knew maybe partly because of my age and I was very aware that like, oh, I'm feeling so much in a time when I didn't expect to that I just felt like I have to take notes.

38:00And I also was aware in the perimenopause part of it, there's a kind of fog that comes with perimenopause. That's just simply one of the symptoms of it. And it can be a lot harder than just a fog. You really can be suffering on an extreme end of the spectrum. And I remember saying to my doctor, a naturopathic gynecologist, like, I'm writing this book. I really want to get it all down, like truthfully. And I'm worried that taking hormones will kind of numb me maybe to like, I won't be able to write the book, you know, if I'm not feeling all the things. And she said, I don't think you'll be able to write the book if you don't take them.

39:03Which kind of hit me, like, I say that not as like a case for, you know, everyone has to do the same thing or even can. But just to say that I don't, it made me realize that one reason, one kind of practical reason why there might not be very many books from this time is that it's quite hard to write through such an interesting and challenging time. And I, I, so the note taking kind of reminded me of that, that I felt like, okay, look, I am going to take these hormones. I do have a pretty good situation in terms of like the space that I'm allowed. I'm allowed to devote four years to thinking about this, which is pretty unusual.

39:50I don't actually know any other woman. And I want to. A lot of women wouldn't want to. That it was kind of like traveling into some land, you know, where we all have been, we all are, but maybe no one was able to take notes, you know, understandably. And so I really saw that as my job, like use all your sort of the benefits you have and apply them because you know you're not alone. You know this isn't unique, you know, but there is something unique about your position and I have the ability to do it. Literally, that's my thing. It's like describing what things feel like, you know. Exactly. And thank God you have.

40:35I mean, the other thing about this particular book is the fact that, you know, for all the reasons that we've discussed, whether it's perimenopause or taking out tampons in a sexual way, whatever it might be, it's utterly, utterly unfiltered. And I am still trying to get anywhere near in my own writing that level of liberation where I stop getting distracted by thinking ahead to what people might assume from my writing. And, you know, I think fiction is sometimes maybe more revealing than nonfiction in terms of what you're focusing on and why. You know, obviously nonfiction is so literal and you're explaining why you're talking about things.

41:22Fiction, you can make all sorts of assumptions and judgments. How did you, with this book, get to the place where you really weren't distracted by outside opinion? It was a long process. Like I, I stayed anxious and self-conscious till really late in it. Really? Without even knowing it, like I thought I'd broken through. But just to give you a sense, up until the last six months of writing the book, when I kind of changed it utterly, changed the sort of last half of it, two thirds. It was a book about a woman. It was more head on about the perimenopause stuff. And it was a woman, the narrator was like interviewing people and all the interviews were in the book, interviewing women, gynecologists, so forth, and sort of building to make a giant project, I guess a book, that was going to show, sort of teach all this, you know, reveal all this.

42:30And the whole time, she also was hoping to have this meeting, meet this Arcanda figure, this kind of like Beyonce-like Arcanda figure, and about a mysterious meeting. She didn't know why Arcanda wanted to meet with her. And she's, you know, so excited to share all this knowledge with the world and to like be the woman who does that, you know. And then the meeting never happens, but Arcanda releases an album that just says it all. She never really thought about it, but it turns out Arcanda is exactly her age. And she's scooped by Arcanda on essentially perimenopause. And Arcanda has the power to really make it okay.

43:23Wow, I can't believe how different this is to the book that you've written. This is wild. I know. I don't know. I've actually not said this before. And I think all of that was sort of my anxiety about doing this, right? Because it's a lot of energy put into this is happening. This is being done. A woman is doing this. Is it me? Is it this other woman? Could this other woman do it better? Yes, because she's Beyonce. Who am I? You know, like this kind of that. And looking back, I'm like, oh, that was all anxiety. And in the last six months, why I changed it didn't actually have to do with realizing like, oh, no, I'm Arcanda.

44:12I am. I don't know. Like, it wasn't like that. It was more just the fiction writer in me was like, this isn't working. Um, and I've got to go deeper into this narrator. And I really did. And it was a point in my life also where I was just, you know, I was in the death field, as she calls it in the book. And I, and I knew that was good. I was like, it's not all easy. And that's part of what makes it interesting and powerful. And what will make this book interesting and powerful. And also the level vulnerability just shot way up, you know, and all that other stuff just kind of went out the window.

44:58I mean, I deleted so quickly when I realized the path forward and it, it all happened really quickly. Um, I remember my friend like read the sort of final draft and she was like, uh, whoa, because I just read it in August and now it's, you know, December and it's, um, and not to say I didn't, you know, rewrite it a million times madly before I had to turn it in. But I think it's sometimes that is the process. Like you're, you're trying and trying and trying and you have to, it's like this devotional process and it's, um, maybe, you know, it's not right, but what else can you do you know you can't invent a better version of your brain but the whole while you are actually making this smarter brain and then at a certain point the brain is smart enough that it goes oh I know what to do and then it doesn't matter that you've lost years of work or something yeah because you're just so happy to have the truth kind of yeah yeah well I think the truth and writing what feels utterly vulnerable is the stuff that hits people between the eyes because it connects.

46:18It's the stuff that you go, oh shit, me too. You know, that's the stuff that hits. So I think it's so admirable to write in such an unfiltered way, but my God, it works. My God, it works. Oh, Miranda, it's been such a joy to talk to you and to dig more deeply into this book that I quite literally have been obsessing over since I read it. I'm going to have to reread it at some point. It's just, it's one of the most game-changing books. Thank you so much for writing it. And thank you so much for being on Happy Place and being part of our book club. I loved it. Thank you. Oh, it wasn't long enough.

47:00It wasn't long enough. I could have talked to Miranda for days. I don't feel like I got anywhere near to the level and the depth of questioning that I wanted to because time moves so quickly, especially when you're chatting to fascinating people. Oh my God, what an icon. I love you, Miranda July. All Fords was our Happy Place recommended read for October and it's out now. Please stop what you're doing and get yourself a copy if you can. And if you follow at Happy Place Book Club on Instagram, you'll find loads of extra content and discussions about all four so do follow us that's for all bookworms that's the place you can have your say on all the books that we read together including our november pick it's another biggie it's leanne moriarty's latest one here one moment it is seriously gripping and i'd love to know what you're making of it so far all right for now a huge thank you again to miranda to the producer anushka tate at happy play studios and to you you utterly gorgeous bookworms.