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. 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. 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. And she affectingly plumbs the mind-bending hugeness that is losing a parent: Oh, how formidable mothers, she suggests, tend to loom even larger in death.

Maggie is a member of the “LGBTQIA2S+” community with an awareness of the privilege of being a “native English speaker with a flat accent,” and a name “signaling whiteness” — all of which casts an exciting, fresh, contemporary character, who still unfortunately falls into clichés of plot. There’s something in the journey here that made me want to keep turning the pages - I also wanted to know about Maggie’s mother’s lovers.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. I found myself thinking about growing older in new ways, but more importantly living a full life as I age. 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.

Well I knew I wasn't reading THE GREAT GATSBY but I still expected more of a send-off than wet panties. This probing, beautiful debut novel by Ilana Masad is an intimate meditation on grief, identity, love, and inheritance.I felt like I was reading about caricatures, not real people, not characters that I could relate to and sympathize with. All My Mother’s Lovers is a beautifully written tale that highlights the intricacies of relationships, especially familial ones. 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. Told over the course of a funeral and shiva, and written with enormous wit and warmth, All My Mother's Lovers is a unique meditation on the universality and particularity of family ties and grief, and a tender and biting portrait of sex, gender, and identity, challenging us to question the nature of fulfilling relationships. Most of us are raised sheltered from the complexities of who our parents really are, believing them to be all knowing and ever wise.

Ariel, the brother in his last year or so of college, is on the cusp of being an adult who is fully independent of his parents as opposed to Maggie who is already independent. What she’d thought were work trips were often dalliances; what she’d thought was a perfect marriage wasn’t (certainly not by sitcom standards). 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. Yes, each circumstance around the person who received a letter was different, but the pattern kept repeating itself. However, this is the balm that Maggie needs to come to terms with the anger of her mother's death before she was able to evolve into a complete adult and fully formed a friendship with her mother.Now in her late twenties, Maggie is finally in something resembling a serious relationship, wondering if some of whatever shaped her parents’ decades-long love story might exist after all. Lovers” can feel thin at times, though it’s a testament to Masad’s writing that I wanted more from the world she created: more depth to Iris’s letters, which read more like camp-pen-pal correspondence than confessions from the grave; and more dimension to Maggie’s dad, Peter, who spends most of the novel out of sorts, only to drop a bombshell at the end that feels pat and underexplored.

try reading this out loud):"Years later, Iris would remember the first time Shlomo hurt her being April Fool’s Day, 1977. all of the lovers were equally interesting to read about, and they provided an additional sense of suspense and another layer to uncover. Maggie and her mother, Iris, weren't close, especially since Maggie came out, but she never thought they would run out of time to figure each other out. This novel follows Maggie who embarks upon a physical and spiritual road trip upon the passing of her mum after discovering some letters that her mum requested be sent. Discovering, alongside Iris’s will, a stack of letters to be mailed in the event of her death gives Maggie an out: She’ll hit the road and hand-deliver them, while also investigating her mom’s mysterious connections to the male addressees, none of whom she’s ever heard of.Ilana Masad delivers a strong debut focused on the complexities of relationships, queerness, and gender.