All My Mothers Lovers
The girls' second book of Series 5 on LGBTQ+ authors is Ilana Masad's stunning "All My Mothers Lovers".In discussing possibly our most divisive main character to date, the girls talk:
- Said divisive main character - is Maggie super selfish or just grieving the loss of her mother in her own way?
- How the grieving process can have you come to terms with your parents' humanity, often too late
- the reality of desire - and how we can be boxed in by what qualities are "acceptable" to be attracted to
- We also get into the differences between the Hindu god Shiva and the Jewish tradition of shiva. Which is not something I thought I'd ever be typing.
Are there tangents?
Why do you ask questions you definitely know the answer to?
- We have some Miocic-Ngannou pregame excitement and a plug for The Bash with Petesy and Niall if that's what you're into
- Some discussion on Chloe's granny sounding like the most terrifying person ever
- BTS not getting a Grammy but we have their upcoming Japanese album to look forward to
- But despite that, we can't co-opt Takeshi Murakami's intellectual property just because it flawlessly symbolises everything J-Hope is. Oh man we love him so much
For all that, PLUS an update on whether Deano has returned to the Two Tyres One Chain family (#ComeHomeDeano) tune in to the latest episode of Chick Lit 4 Life!
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More on All My Mothers Lovers:
After Maggie Krause’s mother dies suddenly in a car crash, Maggie finds five sealed envelopes with her will, each addressed to a mysterious man she’s never heard of. 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. 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.
Overwhelmed by her grief and frustrated with her family, Maggie decides to escape the shiva and hand-deliver her mother’s letters. The ensuing road trip takes her over miles of California highways, through strangers’ recollections of a second, hidden life (that seems almost impossible to reconcile with the Iris she knew), and a journey through her own fears as she navigates her new relationship. 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.
More on Ilana Masad
Ilana Masad is a fiction writer, essayist, and book critic whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Paris Review, NPR, BuzzFeed, Catapult, StoryQuarterly, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, as well as several others. All My Mother’s Lovers is Masad’s debut novel.
To find out more on Ilana Masad, visit