All My Mother's Lovers

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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. 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. Unfolding over the course of nine days, and written with enormous heart, All My Mother's Lovers is a meditation on the universality and particularity of family ties, grief, and generational divides, as well as a tender and biting portrait of sex, gender, and identity. In literature, this position seems to be portrayed as the stereotypical life of many lesbians, so Masad isn't showing anything new or unique along these lines.

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. As she fills in the details of Iris's story, Maggie must confront the possibility that almost everything she knew about her mother -- her marriage, her lukewarm relationship to Judaism, her disapproval of her daughter's queerness -- is more meaningful than she ever allowed herself to imagine. While all the characters are believable in the story, it ends up feeling a little heavy on sending a message to the reader.Well I knew I wasn't reading THE GREAT GATSBY but I still expected more of a send-off than wet panties. The book never quite reconciles the Iris we understand within the familial unit of the Krause home with the woman Maggie learns about in talking to these men. This probing, beautiful debut novel by Ilana Masad is an intimate meditation on grief, identity, love, and inheritance.

Masad deftly navigates a bevy of difficult topics, and the result is a beautiful novel on grief, Jewish families, motherhood, queer identities, and more. all of the lovers were equally interesting to read about, and they provided an additional sense of suspense and another layer to uncover. Giving this three stars largely because the acknowledgements at the end were so lovely and thoughtful.

But, whether communicating with our queer elders or with elders we would never consider part of the queer community, it is important to understand that the things we hold most important are human, and though the words we use to describe experiences may change, there is nevertheless continuity of human experience from one generation to the next.

i found it a bit slow in the beginning, but near the end i was definitely more compelled and i found myself immersed in the story. Masad is a masterful storyteller who offers complex, dynamic characters that continue to surprise us until the very end.I remember my younger brothers at that age and, like Maggie, I observed them behaving in a way that was fully adult, fully responsible. A story of good but difficult characters and the openhearted people who love them, All My Mother’s Lovers is a compassionate and insightful work. It is a reality that jolts Maggie right out of the life she has crafted for herself as a late-20s, queer woman, living in St.

Extending the full scope of human experience to older characters, to queer characters, still feels revolutionary in 2020, and Masad is diligent about sharing those stories and those voices with dignity and care. I liked it best when the story was told from Iris's point of view and wish the author had expanded more on what led her to each and every person she had a relationship with.When Iris suddenly dies, Maggie grapples with past interactions they both had and tries to understand the woman she learns more and more about. In addition to writing fiction and nonfiction, Ilana Masad is one of the best contemporary book critics out there, and her debut novel is evidence that all that reading has done her good. It's told mostly from the perspective of a twenty-something lesbian, Maggie, who had a complicated relationship with her mother, Iris. 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.