All My Mothers Love Part 4

All My Mothers Love Part 4

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Preview — All My Mother's Lovers
by Ilana Masad

Intimacy has always eluded twenty-seven-year-old Maggie Krause—despite being brought up by married parents, models of domestic bliss—until, that is, Lucia came into her life. But when Maggie’s mom, Iris, dies in a car crash, Maggie returns home only to discover a withdrawn dad, an angry brother, and, along with Iris's will, five sealed envelopes, each addressed to a myster
Intimacy has always eluded twenty-seven-year-old Maggie Krause—despite being brought up by married parents, models of domestic bliss—until, that is, Lucia came into her life. But when Maggie’s mom, Iris, dies in a car crash, Maggie returns home only to discover a withdrawn dad, an angry brother, and, along with Iris's will, five sealed envelopes, each addressed to a mysterious man she’s never heard of. In an effort to run from her own grief and discover the truth about Iris—who made no secret of her discomfort with her daughter's sexuality—Maggie embarks on a road trip, determined to hand-deliver the letters and find out what these men meant to her mother. Maggie quickly discovers Iris’s second, hidden life, which shatters everything Maggie thought she knew about her parents’ perfect relationship. What is she supposed to tell her father and brother? And how can she deal with her own relationship when her whole world is in freefall? Told over the course of a funeral and shiva, and written with enormous wit and warmth, All My Mother's Lovers is the exciting debut novel from fiction writer and book critic Ilana Masad. A unique meditation on the universality and particularity of family ties and grief, and a tender and biting portrait of sex, gender, and identity, All My Mother's Lovers challenges us to question the nature of fulfilling relationships.
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Published
May 26th 2020
by Dutton

1524745979
(ISBN13: 9781524745974 )

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(view spoiler) [As I recall (I may be mistaken), both children were fathered by the conveniently asexual father. (hide spoiler) ]

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Jul 26, 2020

Roxane

rated it
liked it

·
review of another edition

Uneven. Excellent premise. Interesting protagonist. The novel soars when the story is told from Iris’s point of view. Pacing is way too slow. It takes too long for the real action to start. I liked the small twists throughout. Overall, this is a great book. But the last line is terrible. Throw my phone terrible. Why would you do that to your awesome book? WHY? Worth reading regardless.

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Emotionally powerful and thought-provoking, Ilana Masad's debut novel,
All My Mother's Lovers
, is a look at family dynamics, secrets, motherhood, sexuality, marriage, and grief. How can you not be pulled into a book that starts, “Maggie is in the midst of a second lazy orgasm when her brother, Ariel, calls to tell her that their mother has died”? Maggie is thrown by news of her mother’s sudden death. They hadn’t been particularly close in years, as Maggie felt Iris never accepted her sexuality
Emotionally powerful and thought-provoking, Ilana Masad's debut novel,
All My Mother's Lovers
, is a look at family dynamics, secrets, motherhood, sexuality, marriage, and grief. How can you not be pulled into a book that starts, “Maggie is in the midst of a second lazy orgasm when her brother, Ariel, calls to tell her that their mother has died”? Maggie is thrown by news of her mother’s sudden death. They hadn’t been particularly close in years, as Maggie felt Iris never accepted her sexuality, always seeming to insinuate it was some sort of phase. But she always assumed they’d get past this and work things out. Still, Maggie’s grief is palpable, and she has trouble navigating her father and brother’s feelings as well. Going through her mother’s papers, she finds envelopes addressed to five different men whose names she doesn’t recognize. In an effort to escape the stifling environment of a house in mourning, she decides to deliver these letters by hand to the men. Along the way, she discovers a side of her mother she never knew existed, secrets she (and in some instances, Maggie’s father) kept, and she starts to understand things her mother did and said which never had context before. How well do we truly know our parents? How do we know the things that make them react the way they do to circumstances in their lives? How do our parents’ relationships impact our own relationships?
All My Mother's Lovers
was a really well-written and thoughtful book. Narrated by Maggie in the present and Iris at various junctures in her past, it’s a fascinating commentary on how the people we love often hide their true selves from us, and how that affects our interactions with them. I didn’t get to finish this before the end of June but this was my last Pride Read of the month. Check out my list of the best books I read in 2019 at https://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-best-books-i-read-in-2019.html . Check out my list of the best books of the decade at https://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/2020/01/my-favorite-books-of-decade.html . See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com . Follow me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/the.bookishworld.of.yrralh/ .
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Jul 09, 2020

Adam Dalva

rated it
it was amazing

·
review of another edition

A really astonishing debut w/ a very clever, fun hook. I'll be talking about it with Masad TONIGHT for Litquake - would love to "see" some Goodreads friends in the virtual audience! https://litquakeyearround2020.sched.c...
A really astonishing debut w/ a very clever, fun hook. I'll be talking about it with Masad TONIGHT for Litquake - would love to "see" some Goodreads friends in the virtual audience! https://litquakeyearround2020.sched.c...
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3.5-4.0 I can't quite decide where I fall so I'm rounding up because this is a debut and I absolutely will read this author's next book. Plus, I loved her writing. I really enjoyed this story, however it kind of dragged at times? I feel badly because it took me FOREVER to read this book - and it wasn't for a lack of wanting to. I had other books I had to get to, so I had to put it down for a few months. I then put myself on the wait list for the audio because I really wanted to get back to it! To
3.5-4.0 I can't quite decide where I fall so I'm rounding up because this is a debut and I absolutely will read this author's next book. Plus, I loved her writing. I really enjoyed this story, however it kind of dragged at times? I feel badly because it took me FOREVER to read this book - and it wasn't for a lack of wanting to. I had other books I had to get to, so I had to put it down for a few months. I then put myself on the wait list for the audio because I really wanted to get back to it! To help flush out my feelings on my journey with this book, here is the breakdown of how I read it: 0-25% Reading 25-80% Audio 80-100% Reading I struggle sometimes with audio because it feels like I'm on a hamster wheel. I only have a little bit of my day to listen (versus no time to read), and with the nature of this particular plot (daughter of deceased mother finds letters to four strangers to be sent if she dies - there by creating a journey for the daughter to deliver these letters) made things a little repetitive. Yes, each circumstance around the person who received a letter was different, but the pattern kept repeating itself...so I switched back to reading because I wanted to finish the book. I mentally needed to move on to something else. Please don't misunderstand this as me not liking the book, but I hope provide insight into why I rated this down a little. (It being slightly repetitive.) What I absolutely loved about this book was how unique it was. I can't honestly think of another book like it! (A good thing.) It's told mostly from the perspective of a twenty-something lesbian, Maggie, who had a complicated relationship with her mother, Iris. Iris made it known that she struggled with her daughter's sexuality and this has a lasting impact on Maggie's life. As we spend time with Maggie, we see how she processes her feelings and past and current decisions in the shadow of this complex relationship. When Iris suddenly dies, Maggie grapples with past interactions they both had and tries to understand the woman she learns more and more about. I think if this were a book club choice or group discussion, there would be a lot to ponder about parents being people with lives prior to having children and how those lives continue once children come into the picture. While I'm not gay, I found a lot to identify with here because of our similarity in age. It's not at the forefront, but there definitely is a coming of age aspect to this book - particularly in a time that is very unstable and scary (2017 - we haven't even gotten to COVID yet!!). Maggie very much is trying to figure out who she is as a person still and how that role might change now that she lost her mother. I highly recommend this as something to pick up. Maybe you will feel differently than I did regarding it being repetitive. I think the book could have been a little shorter, but that's just me. This book overwhelmingly provided value to me as a reading/listening experience and I can't wait for Ms. Masad's next book. Thank you to Edelweiss, Dutton Books and Ilana Masad for the opportunity to read this and provide an honest review. Review Date: 09/16/2020 Publication Date: 05/26/2020
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Jun 01, 2020

Marie

rated it
it was ok

I’m giving this book two stars instead of one because it’s competently written, but I pretty much hated it. The author has managed to write a character that is completely selfish, annoying, rude, clueless, and irresponsible. There’s little that’s redeeming here. She buries her feelings in pot and booze, is incredibly rude to her younger brother (they’re both adults), dismissive of her mother, and pandering to her father. She’s wasted a lot but you never really feel empathy for her, you must feel
I’m giving this book two stars instead of one because it’s competently written, but I pretty much hated it. The author has managed to write a character that is completely selfish, annoying, rude, clueless, and irresponsible. There’s little that’s redeeming here. She buries her feelings in pot and booze, is incredibly rude to her younger brother (they’re both adults), dismissive of her mother, and pandering to her father. She’s wasted a lot but you never really feel empathy for her, you must feel like, sheesh, what a jerk. She goes off on this wild goose chase to find the men her mother left letters to, and when she finds them she’s abusive to them. My thought on the opening scene of this book, in which the main character and her girlfriend are having sex and interrupted by a phone call, is that I don’t want to walk in on people having sex in real life, and I don’t want to meet a new character that way, either. Let me get to know her first, let me ease into her sexual life as I ease into her life in general. Starting a book with a sex scene was off-putting—way too much, way too soon.
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Jul 01, 2020

Katie

rated it
did not like it

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review of another edition

Whew, I really wanted to love this book. A book about grieving a difficult parent, where the main character is a millennial lesbian? Yes. Please. Relatable content, hello. Unfortunately, I gave this book every chance to earn my love, and I just could not. Spoilers below. *** I think the way this book started out was pretty telling of how the rest of it was going to go. The reader meets the protagonist, Maggie, in the midst of having sex with her girlfriend. I am no prude, and I have no problem star
Whew, I really wanted to love this book. A book about grieving a difficult parent, where the main character is a millennial lesbian? Yes. Please. Relatable content, hello. Unfortunately, I gave this book every chance to earn my love, and I just could not. Spoilers below. *** I think the way this book started out was pretty telling of how the rest of it was going to go. The reader meets the protagonist, Maggie, in the midst of having sex with her girlfriend. I am no prude, and I have no problem starting a book with a sex scene. The problem with this particular sex scene was that it was terrible. This was about the least sexy description of a sex scene ever. It was incredibly stereotypical lesbian sex - multiple orgasms! very wet eating out! one partner who has trouble with commitment! - and felt very trite. I tried to get past it. Unfortunately, that was the whole book. The main character of Maggie seems like a cardboard cutout of a stereotypical queer millennial. Doc Martens? Check. Entitled, spoiled rich kid? Check. Liberal politics? Yep, that too. It felt so incredibly stereotypical. I'm a liberal Obama loving old millennial/young Gen X-er, and I can affirm we are not a monolith that thinks with a hive mind. Maggie, however, seems like what every Boomer THINKS we are. Also, did I mention she's a lesbian? Because she does. Constantly. Every fucking page. I am actually a real live human who is a lesbian, and I was sick to death of hearing about Maggie's lesbianism by chapter 2. Maggie wasn't the only character who read like a job description of a specific kind of person. Maggie's girlfriend Lucia, the only character for whom I had any amount of sympathy because Maggie's inability to return her texts or calls immediately got on my last nerve, is the other stereotypical millennial. Maggie tells the reader that Lucia is Puerto Rican and Black, that she has had stress and anxiety since Trump's election, and that she was so affected by the Charlottesville tragedy that she had to sleep at her own house rather than Maggie's apartment that night. Maggie and Lucia felt like the author was ticking off the boxes of what queer life looks like for the 25-35 set in the Trump years. I felt like I was reading about caricatures, not real people, not characters that I could relate to and sympathize with. There comes the second massive issue with this book. It is like a laundry list of descriptive paragraphs. We are TOLD everything. "My dad was really sad." "Ariel was really angry." "Maggie felt alone." We get all of these reports of how people felt but it's so ineffectively expressed that it never feels real. I need a book to show me how a character is, through their actions, not just tell me repeatedly without ever actually showing an example of the claimed behaviour or personality trait. Finally, these people were just wholly unsympathetic. Maggie was rude, angry, and seemed unable to control what came out of her mouth. After imploring her dad to "be nice" to people in her absence, she then goes right to her mother's first lover's house and after finding out that he and her mom had an affair, proceeds to berate this man in his own home and in front of his son. He then offers her a place to sleep for the night. I would have kicked her ass to the curb if she spoke to me like that in my own house. Maggie's mother Iris is no more sympathetic. She was basically a mediocre mother who was absent a lot because she was off sleeping with various men in order to make up for her miserable first marriage. Cool. And I'm supposed to feel...what...for this woman? I didn't feel anything at all. The whole cast of characters - Maggie's spoiled, selfish brother Ariel, her pushover dad, her largely absent girlfriend...there was really no one I could root for and get behind. I pushed my way through this book because as a millennial lesbian, I felt obligated to, but it was a serious struggle.
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l 79% l writing reviews is all fun and games until i come across a book that i have absolutely no idea how to review. this book is one of those. i don’t know what to say about it, other than that it’s very interesting and i annotated it a lot and it’s quotable and has impressive portrayals of life and love. i didn’t really understand the point of the book at first, it went really slowly and i liked it but didn’t love it. this is one of those books that becomes good slowly and by the end it felt me
l 79% l writing reviews is all fun and games until i come across a book that i have absolutely no idea how to review. this book is one of those. i don’t know what to say about it, other than that it’s very interesting and i annotated it a lot and it’s quotable and has impressive portrayals of life and love. i didn’t really understand the point of the book at first, it went really slowly and i liked it but didn’t love it. this is one of those books that becomes good slowly and by the end it felt meaningful and whole. this was good literary fiction. the plot: so basically the premise of this book is about a woman whose mom dies and she finds some letters from her mom addressed to people so she decides to deliver the letters for her mom. there’s not really a mystery involved or anything super important in the plot, it’s mor
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