Explore the real-world places that appear in All Fours by Miranda July. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include The Narrator's Home (Eastside Los Angeles), Silver Lake Reservoir, Griffith Park, The Freeway Out of Los Angeles, The Nondescript Motel (Monrovia) and 3 more.
Silver Lake area, Los Angeles — where the trip begins
The unnamed forty-five-year-old narrator, a semi-famous artist, lives here with her husband Harris and their child. She announces her plan to drive cross-country to New York and then leaves, setting the novel's story in motion. The house stands for the settled domestic life she is about to step outside of. No specific street address is given, so this marker uses the Eastside neighborhood as the closest real-world equivalent.
Silver Lake grew in the early 20th century and became a hub for artists, musicians and filmmakers. Its hillside houses include notable modernist designs by architects such as Richard Neutra and John Lautner.
Silver Lake is a densely populated residential neighborhood with cafes, shops and music venues. The private homes are not open to visitors.
Silver Lake — everyday Eastside LA backdrop
The reservoir is included as the kind of Eastside LA landscape the narrator's family life moves through: school runs, errands and the routines of a marriage and parenthood that she is about to leave behind. The novel never fixes her day-to-day routine to a single spot, so this marker is atmospheric context rather than a named scene.
The reservoir was built in 1907 as part of the Los Angeles water system and named for water commissioner Herman Silver. It was drained in 2015 and restored as a water-quality measure, then converted to a recreational area.
The Silver Lake Meadow and the loop path around the reservoir are popular with walkers and joggers. It is a free public park.
Visit: Silver Lake Reservoir Complex (park)
Los Feliz — the green edge of the narrator's LA
Griffith Park stands in for the wider Los Angeles of the narrator's creative life as an artist and mother, the place she leaves behind when she heads east. The book doesn't tie a key scene to it, so this marker is context for her home territory rather than a plot location.
Griffith J. Griffith donated the land to the City of Los Angeles in 1896, and it is among the largest urban parks in North America. Griffith Observatory opened in 1935.
The park has hiking trails, the Observatory, the Greek Theatre and the LA Zoo. It is open to the public every day.
Visit: Griffith Park (park)
Eastbound toward the I-210 corridor — the road trip that never happens
About thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child, the narrator abandons her planned cross-country drive and spontaneously leaves the freeway. This split-second decision turns an ambitious road trip into a detour only a few dozen miles from home. The route is a real-world approximation, since the novel is about the sudden turn rather than the roadway itself.
The I-210 Foothill Freeway was built in stages from the 1950s to the 1980s through the San Gabriel Valley, following the old Route 66 corridor along Foothill Boulevard.
The freeway is a busy commuter route linking Pasadena, Arcadia, Monrovia and beyond. It is a roadway, not a visitor destination.
Foothill Boulevard area, Monrovia — where she checks in and stays
This is the book's central setting. Instead of continuing east, the narrator checks into an ordinary motel not far from home and stays, entering an entirely different journey of desire, reinvention and self-examination. She remakes the room to suit her inner life and tests the limits of intimacy, marriage and domestic expectations. The motel is a real-world stand-in for the unnamed lodging in the novel.
Foothill Boulevard in Monrovia followed the historic Route 66 path and was lined with roadside motels from the 1930s through the 1950s. Many of the motels have been repurposed or demolished over the decades.
The Foothill corridor still has a mix of older motels, car dealerships and storefronts. Individual motels are private businesses not specifically tied to the book.
Myrtle Avenue — the small-town streets around the motel
The narrator's detour places her in Monrovia, a small, quiet foothill city that feels worlds away from her Eastside LA life even though it is a short drive. The ordinary shops and streets around her motel provide the contrast against which her stranger inner journey plays out.
Monrovia was founded in 1886 by William N. Monroe. Its historic Myrtle Avenue downtown is known for early 20th-century commercial buildings and was used as a filming location for many movies and television shows.
Myrtle Avenue has restaurants, shops, a weekly Friday night street fair and the Aztec Hotel on nearby Foothill. It is a lively public district.
Visit: Old Town Monrovia (landmark)
Monrovia area — where the narrator meets Davey
Davey, a younger man who works at a car rental business, becomes the object of the narrator's intense fascination during her stay near the motel. Their charged encounters set off the emotional and erotic tangle that drives much of the novel, and his wife Joanne, a dancer, becomes entangled in it too. The exact location is approximate, since the book places this scene in the motel's orbit.
Car rental and auto services have long clustered along Monrovia's Foothill and Myrtle corridors, which grew around highway traffic along old Route 66.
The area has commercial businesses, services and shops. The specific business is a private company not tied to the novel.
Colorado Boulevard — the nearest big town to the detour
Pasadena sits between the narrator's Eastside home and her Monrovia motel, and it is the larger urban landscape she skirts as she drifts between her old life and her new one. It serves as regional context for the journey rather than a scene in the novel.
Pasadena was founded in 1874 and became a winter resort for wealthy Midwesterners. Old Pasadena's brick commercial district was restored in the 1980s and 1990s after decades of decline.
Old Pasadena is a popular shopping, dining and nightlife district. The nearby Rose Bowl and Norton Simon Museum draw visitors from across Southern California.
Visit: Old Pasadena Historic District (landmark)
More by Miranda July: All Miranda July books
More novels set in Los Angeles: Browse all Los Angeles books on Map A Story
Other nearby maps: Eve's Hollywood by Eve Babitz locations map · Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard locations map · The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler locations map · Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury locations map