All Fours

The unnamed narrator is the novel’s protagonist and tells her story from her first-person point of view. Because she’s conveying her account from her perspective and in her own words, all of the novel’s action and conflict originates from her experience. A 45-year-old woman, she lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband, Harris, and their child, Sam. She was an only child and has distanced relationships with her parents, whom she talks to only intermittently. The narrator is a writer and a visual artist. She doesn’t “go into the tedious specifics of what [she does]” but does explain that she “had success in several mediums at a young age” and has been “at a crucial turning point” in her work ever since (6). She has a studio in the garage of her home and spends most of her time there. While she enjoys her private creative sessions, she’s constantly compartmentalizing her creative life from her home and family life. This is one of the main reasons that she feels stifled and trapped in her marriage. She believes that she and Harris have “a mutual and steadfast devotion” (13) to each other yet also admits that she has never fully revealed her true self to her husband.