June Intermission: All My Mother's Lovers - Ilana Masad

Hi there!

Welcome to our June Intermission for Ilana Masad's 2020 All My Mother's Lovers.

Trigger Warning: Death, Car Crash, Domestic Violence, Abuse, Funeral, Explicit Sexual Themes and Scenes (Explicit Open Door), Affairs, Drug Use, Grief

Overall

For us, we love this book - it's very intentional and not very flippant. It's very precious in a genuine way and takes a serious look at what it means to be an aging adult, and also a daughter discovering who her mother is for the first time, outside of just being her mother. Very slice of life, with a faster-moving plot. It's not a book about death and grief - it's just that Maggie's mom's death was the catalyst for Maggie's growth.

Iris

Getting the flashbacks written in from Iris' point of view is wonderful (Iris is Maggie's Mom). We like Iris a lot, but we acknowledge that she is truly a complicated and human character. She is having an affair in her 60s. She seems homophobic, but really might only be trying to protect her out-and-proud daughter.

Maggie

As the Narrator, Maggie is one million percent biased. But in this kind of book, it's okay for her to be unreliable because she is simply a flawed human - she's just as unreliable as we are or you are.

Her grief drives her to process in ways that feel good (just like we do); by self-medicating, running, confronting, pay homage to her mother's last request, and perhaps even going through the stages of grief through the lens of growing up and learning who her mother really was and what she left behind.

There is clear female rage in Maggie's feelings about her mother - she has a justified anger at her Mother that she's preparing to express (even though she's more angry at Abe for now) - and we're super interested in the feelings she's going to experience with that grief processing.

The Letters in Part 1

We think that Iris absolutely wanted Maggie to deliver the letters and learn about them. We also think about the fact that this is what Iris' legacy is - maybe that's what her legacy is - leaving behind words of love - and then what can Maggie learn from that? I think we'll learn more in Part II about this.

Queer and Jewish Identity

We chose this book because of the Jewish and Queer Themes - we can't speak much to the Jewish aspect of her grief - mainly because she doesn't mention it in Part I - she seems more casual about her religion - and her angry rebellious misunderstood teenage self is DEFINITELY informing her choice to carry the letters to these men with full knowledge they were perhaps meant to be more private letters.

The Men

The men that Iris has written the letters to have been interesting to learn about. Abe seems like a sweetheart and nice - but he didn't seem to know much about Iris and her family - he seemed like a long-term hook-up but not much beyond that.

We are absolutely going to learn much more about Iris' past and her love affairs, but we're also going to see how Maggie's views on her mother are going to change as well - and that's what we're going to learn about.

Where We Are Now & Where We Go From Here

I think we are also going to see Maggie's purpose for the road trip change over time - she is going to process her grief through the lens of her Mother's Lovers - she is going to go from running away from her grief to putting things to rest just like she has to put her mother to rest.

More specifically, Maggie is going to meet these men, get mad at them, then each time she'll become less mad at the men and more mad at her mother. We're not sure if she's going to tell her father, mainly because he's quite fragile in his grief.

Hopefully, Maggie will experience closure, but we have no idea how this will end.

With love, see you soon!

Ceraya & Brieanna