‘I was in a kind of ecstatic freefall’: artist Miranda July on writing the book that could change your life

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The artist and filmmaker has always enjoyed challenging convention. Now she has written a novel which takes a breathtaking look at menopause, sex, death and transformation

‘I was in a kind of ecstatic freefall’: artist Miranda July on writing the book that could change your lifehas rented a little house in LA for 20 years. Every morning she’d drive over from the home she shared with her husband and young child, work on her films and art and writing and drive home again, until one day she noticed that another little house, the little rundown house that backed on to hers, was empty, and she had a thought.

July grew up in California then moved to Portland, Oregon. She took the name July at 15, after a character in one of her best friend’s stories, changing it legally at 20 – she was involved in the post-punkscene by then, making music and working as a stripper in a peep show to fund her art practice. After the release of her award- winning filmin 2005, some critics responded by dismissing it with descriptions like “twee”, while her male peers were credited for their surreal genius.

Those Wednesday nights felt full and rich, like a whole year at a time, and she started to see “that just as the structures around a career didn’t exactly fit me, the same is true with my home and romantic life”. It was around this time that she started researching her novel by interviewing scores of gynaecologists, naturopaths and older friends about menopause, eventually focusing on what this stage of life means for desire. The process sounds equal parts liberating and derailing.

 

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