All My Mother's Lovers, Ilana Masad's debut novel, is an empathetic portrait of a difficult mother-daughter relationship intercut with grief, road trips and queer romance. The novel begins with 27-year-old Maggie Krause returning home after her mother's sudden death. Maggie's grief is complicated by long-held resentments: her mother's frequent absences and her seeming refusal to accept Maggie's queerness fractured their relationship. Maggie finds an excuse to escape the unbearable grief--and long, painful shiva--filling her childhood home when she discovers a series of letters her mother has left behind, addressed to men Maggie has never heard of. In one of a series of arguably selfish choices--Maggie is young, figuring herself out, and no saint--she decides to leave her grieving father and brother and deliver the letters in person, initiating a series of road trips to find out who these men are and what they meant to her mother.
All My Mother's Lovers is about rediscovering Maggie's mother, a contradictory, surprising woman who Maggie, as children often do, has inadvertently rendered into a two-dimensional figure. It is also about Maggie learning to shed habits of mind that have long held her back in forming relationships. Maggie's current relationship is undefined, hovering on the edge of a seriousness that Maggie has so far avoided or sabotaged: "This is what she usually considers too real. This is when she bails." But as Maggie discovers that her parent's marriage wasn't as simple and perfect as she had always believed, she tries to learn to trust her girlfriend instead of the incessant fears and self-doubt running through her head.
In a way, All My Mother's Lovers resembles a coming-of-age novel, inasmuch as learning to forgive and accept your parents--and the insecurities they've handed down--is a critical part of growing up. Maggie is a strong-willed young woman who throws herself into risky situations and says what's on her mind. Whether she wants to admit it or not, a lot of that comes from her mother. In interstitial chapters from her mother's perspective, readers learn how her mother pursued her own unorthodox happiness, and the sacrifices she made along the way. Meanwhile, Maggie charts her own course through grief in drunken adventures, confrontations and revelations. All My Mother's Lovers is a raw, emotional book about acceptance and the kind of complicated, messy love that sometimes takes years to comprehend. --Hank Stephenson, manuscript reader, the Sun magazine
Shelf Talker: All My Mother's Lovers takes readers on a series of emotional road trips with Maggie, a young queer woman trying to understand her absent, disapproving mother in the wake of her sudden death.