8stitches 9lives's Reviews > All My Mothers

All My Mothers is the story of one girl’s journey to find her birth mother, and her realisation that mothers – and family – can be discovered in the most unexpected of places. Eva Martinez-Green seemingly has everything a young woman could yearn for. Yet she has always felt like a part of her was missing and something she couldn't quite put her finger on was not quite right. We are first introduced to her as she attends her very first day at school. She's a bashful and quiet girl who inhabits a large house in Chelsea with her mother and father, but when she thinks about it, she wonders why she has no memories before the age of three and a half years old. She feels like an outsider even in her own home with her emotionally stilted mother who always holds back some of herself and never gives quite enough of her love and care to her young daughter. She spent most of her time in bed and is distant, cold and the mothering instinct certainly does not come naturally to her. She also isn't supportive of her daughter and when Eva meets her best friend, Bridget, she sees exactly how mothers usually behave in loving homes. She feels more loved and safe and at home at Bridget’s than she ever does in her own home.

She even receives hugs and kind, supportive words from Bridget’s mum, too. This makes Eva want to understand even more why her own mother is not motherly, so she sets out to discover the truth. She begins to believe that the Martinez-Green clan may not be her biological family, so she embarks upon a mission to either confirm her theory or disprove it and hopefully find a sense of belonging in the process. This is a captivating, heartbreaking and deeply emotional novel that asks the question: What would it be like to think that you’d ended up with the wrong mother? I loved this poignant, tear-jerker of a story: Eva's range of possible and impossible families, her risky attempts at friendship, her unexpected epiphanies, her passion for the ancient city of Córdoba — and the sometimes terrible, sometimes wonderful, always powerful, impact of love. Joanna Glen has returned with a tender and evocative examination of one woman’s journey of self-discovery. No one writes of the joy and heartache of life as thoughtfully and beautifully, and Eva’s story is entirely bewitching. Exploring yearning, grief and love in all its forms, it will leave you bereft but bedazzled. Highly recommended.