"If stars only came out once every thirty years, we'd be totally mesmerised by them, and we'd stay up all night lying on our backs looking at them."
On the journey to looking for her biological mother, Eva Martínez-Green finds out that there many ways of being a mother to someone who's not your natural child. Lacking a motherly figure, from the young age of six until adulthood Eva will find these figures in friends, in their friend's mothers, in babysitters and housekeepers, and even in teachers. Through all this journey she'll discover her story, her background and herself, discovering that parents aren't perfect, that the place you're raised doesn't have to be your place, that sometimes you feel a special bond to a place or to a person for a reason. All My Mothers is a journal, Eva's journal, where she explains her own story, first from the point of view of a child and then through her poverty and twenties, even changing the writing style as she grows up and discovers the world.
"The energy in everything is in its relationship with everything else."
Joanna Glen has written an equally beautiful and painful story, through which the reader, along Eva, will discover how close opposite feelings are, that you can feel painful joy or happy sadness, and every tear shed will be worth it. Reading this book you'll fall in love with Córdova, you'll want to be part of Eva's inner circle, singing, working and suffering with all of them as they live their stories. This book is more than a story, for it could be perfectly true, but it also radiates a whole vibe, just by seeing its cover you know this book is going to be great. And it is indeed. It's a masterpiece from beginning to end.
"That's what we are, layer on layer of experience."
I have to say, at the beginning of All My Mothers I didn't understand why the writing was so childish, but, of course, if the character talking is a child and thinks as such, they can't write and reason as an adult would. So once I understood that, I started truly enjoying the book, and then I couldn't put it down, so I ended up reading it in three days. The extremely good writing and the intrigue of what was going to happen next kept me up at night (no, I'm not exaggerating), so I started reading each morning and only left the book aside to eat (I was camping on my own that weekend so I had plenty of time and no one to bother me). I also have to admit that, after a year and a half in a huge reading slump, the fact that it has been the first book I've actually finished after all this time, has given it a special place in my mind and my heart, because it has taken me out of that slump, which means that any time I get into another reading slump I'll pick All My Mothers up and read it again, hoping it will help me as it did this time. This is my way of telling you that this book is great and that if you're struggling with a reading slump, it may help you. Trust me, but also be aware that you're going to cry your heart out. I actually don't know how I finished it, since my eyes were filled with tears.
As always, thanks for reading me.
