All My Goodbyes

by Mariana Dimópulos, Alice Whitmore (Translator)

This highly acclaimed contemporary Argentinian novel is the first in Giramondo's 'Literature of the South' series, featuring innovative fiction and non-fiction by writers of the southern hemisphere. It is translated from the Spanish by Australian translator Alice Whitmore All My Goodbyes is a novel told in overlapping vignettes, which follow the travels of a young Argentinian woman across Europe (Malaga, Madrid, Heidelberg, Berlin) and back to Argentina (Buenos Aires, Patagonia) as she flees from situation to situation, job to job, and relationship to relationship. Within the complexity of the narrator's situation, a backstory emerges about a brutal murder in Patagonia which she may or may not be implicated in, but whether this is the cause of her flight is never entirely clear - she is driven as much by psychological concerns, her relationship with her father, uncertainty about her identity and purpose in life.

The novella is, as the title suggests, a catalogue of goodbyes, the result of a decade-long cycle of self-inflicted alienation which the narrator, despite herself, seems fated to perpetuate. In its structure it recalls the rich Argentinian tradition of Cortazar and Borges; its language is by turns stark and elaborate, brutal in its economy and yet poetic in its imagery.

Genres: Fiction, Spanish Literature, Literature, Contemporary, Novels, Novella, Romance

136 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Mariana Dimópulos es licenciada en Letras (UBA), escritora y traductora. Cursó estudios de Filosofía en Alemania (Universidad de Heidelberg), donde vivió de 1999 a 2005. Es traductora del alemán y del inglés, y también docente universitaria. Colabora en medios gráficos argentinos (Radar/Página12; Revista Ñ/Clarín). Ha traducido, entre otros, a Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno y Robert Musil. Como narradora, publicó cuentos en diversas revistas y las novelas Anís (Entropía, 2008), Cada despedida (Adriana Hidalgo, 2010) y Pendiente (Adriana Hidalgo, 2013).

Reviews

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

"My freedom always implies the slavery of another. So my heart asks (and at heart, I'm no good): if I enslave myself, does that mean that someone else is set free?"

▫️All My Goodbyes by Mariana Dimópulos, translated from the Spanish by Alice Whitmore

The protagonist in All My Goodbyes is a "rolling stone". She moves frequently between European cities in Spain and Germany, back to #Argentina, back and forth a few more times. She forms bonds, and abruptly cuts ties. And then one night on a farm in Patagonia...
.
The book's narrative structure is #fragmentary, running 4 or 5 storylines concurrently, each paragraph moving in time and space. It's a brilliant maneuver to show her itinerant nature and head space. It took awhile to orient myself, but once I did, I really liked this book.

[Julia Tulloh Harper · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars
This was great- a story of a woman’s ‘goodbyes’ to the people she forms relationships with as she travels/wanders across Europe for a decade - but less about travelling than avoiding the self-reflection that accompanies settling in one place (or with one person) for too long. Narrated in a fragmented and non-chronological style which suited the story perfectly. Also a dark and violent element which was really unsettling and effective.

[Sarah ~ · Rating 3 out of 5]

All My Goodbyes - Mariana Dimópulos


بطلة هذه الرواية تغادر بوينس آيرس وهي في الثالثة والعشرين وتترك خلفها والدها وأخوتها، وترحل إلى مدن أوروبية تتركها تباعًا بلا روابط أوممتلكات أو وداع، تترك خلفها كل مرة أحبة وأصدقاء ومعارف ومدنًا وبيوتًا وغرفًا وأعمالًا وأرباب أعمال.
لا نفهم تمامًا لم هذه الرغبة الدائمة بالتنقل، هل هذا خيارها؟ أم أنها مضطرة لهذا، تنتقد نفسها كثيرًا وهي شخصية خجولة، وتستقر أخيرًا في باتاغونيا أقصى جنوب الأرجنتين وهناك تقنع نفسها أنها سعيدة أخيرًا حتى تقع جرائم القتل التي تطارد قصتها.

تذكرني الشخصية بكل هذا التنقل بأولغا توكارتشوك وهي تقول في رحّالة:
"جذوري كانت دائمًا ضحلة..."

القصة تروى بشكل مجزأ حيث تروى عدّة قصص في وقتٍ واحد، نقرأ قليلا عن يومياتها في مدينة ما مثلا ثم ننتقل للحاضر وحياتها في باتوغونيا ثم نقفز فورًا لعملها في مكان آخر وهكذا. تتخلل كل هذا شذرات وخواطر وأفكار.

القصة ككل قصيرة ومظلمة وغير مفهومة تمامًا لكنها مدهشة أيضًا ولا تحتاج لكثير من الجهد بمجرد أن نتجاوز الصفحات الأولى ونعرف ما تفعله الكاتبة ..
للترجمة الإنجليزية غلافان حسب دار النشر، وكلاهما رائعان.



~

فجر يوم الجمعة، التاسع عشر من رمضان - 1445 هـ.

[Andy Weston · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s many of the elements here for a really good novel, but it doesn’t ever achieve that.
I can certainly relate to the young woman who narrates; she is a traveller, and for ten years has moved around the world to work as I did, never really settling anywhere for very long, until, with an ailing father, she feels the need to return him to Buenos Aires. In Berlin, Julia, a trauma therapist with whom the narrator lives, diagnoses her with “suitcase syndrome”.
She doesn’t settle for long, and heads down to Patagonia to work on a fruit farm, where she falls in love, but tragedy ensues. We know from the start of the novel about the tragedy, so it’s no spoiler, but more details of it emerge throughout the story.
It’s a very fragmented narrative, switching timelines frequently (often by paragraph) between countries and workplaces, reflecting the narrator’s own life.
As a whole, it’s a bit difficult to pin down; in part it’s both a crime story and a travelogue, though the crime element falls away rather insipidly, which was a disappointment. Moreover, Dimópulos prefers to focus on investigating why a nomadic lifestyle is appealing.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my usual fare, this novel is seemingly stream of conscious regarding all the times, the main character has left various places and people. It is ostensibly a murder mystery, but I did not care about these characters nearly enough to invest myself in them. The main character cannot stay in any one place for any length of time or be committed to anyone. This made her seem extremely immature rather than interesting. On to the next on my TBR.

[Wiebke (1book1review) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very enjoyable read, moving back and forth through her life and different relationships and jobs. I recommend it for anyone who likes when the narration is all over the place, constantly changing time and place and yet managing to bring the character closer to you.

[Rachel Louise Atkin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This wasn’t what I thought it was going to be but I enjoyed the writing. I expected there to be more darkness and murder in it from the blurb but it was mostly just about the narrators travel and relationship with odd men. It did have a great vibe but not much happened in the way of plot and the voice wasn’t strong enough to wow me based on that alone. I would recommend it if you like books about women going feral but in a muted sort of way. I think the book comes across a lot more sinister than it actually is which is just what disappointed me.

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like a 4.5 so it will get rounded up. Quite honestly, despite the odd style taking a while to click in my head, I really enjoyed this book.

full (but brief) post here:
https://www.readingavidly.com/2019/03...

The story here is unfolded by an unnamed narrator whose life over the past ten years has been one of arrivals and departures,

"the same thing time and time again, shamelessly, tirelessly. It doesn't matter whether it's morning or night, winter or summer. Whether the house feels like home, whether somebody comes to the door to let me in. I arrive, and I want to stay, and then I leave."

She has lived her life in a series of cities since leaving Buenos Aires, away from her life with her father, before returning to Argentina where she ends up in Patagonia, on a farm near El Bolsón. Within those places she's lived in different rooms of different hostels and houses, taken on different jobs and different lovers, yet there was a sameness about these "pilgrim years," in that

"..staying put was not an option, those years spent in a kind of conspiracy with habit and daily routine, despite myself, but always with a ticket under my arm, or perhaps up my dirty sleeve, always with a passage to somewhere else at the ready. I would always arrive with the intention of staying. And even then I wouldn't stay."

At the same time, as she says, "it was all about arriving" which is a point to follow as you read this book.

It is on her return to Argentina and an arrival at yet another life that something terrible happens to interrupt her chance to finally stop moving, and as she explores that event, she conjures up her past in short bursts of observations of the places she's been, and the people in her life there.
Obviously that's not everything, and if you want more of a look at plot, you can click on that link to my reading journal.

The truth of the matter is that I bought this book expecting that it was going to be a crime novel, and while there is a murder at the center of it all, All My Goodbyes turned out to be something completely unexpected, another one of those books where I had to sit for a while trying to wrap my head around what I'd just read.

The sense of movement, detachment, alienation, and dislocation in this story all loom large here but at the same time, the author also lays down the foundation for a suspenseful read at the beginning and allows it to build slowly. While I have no intention of spoiling things, the ending came as a bit of a shocker that left me thinking for quite a long time about the implications of what is revealed here.

I very much appreciate the originality in terms of style and story; I get so tired of same old same old and this book is dark and refreshingly different. It may not be for everyone, but it was certainly a book I enjoyed. While I can totally understand why people weren't so enamored with the style, the nonlinear approach and lack of any particular chronology, from my own perspective, I don't think the book would have turned out to be as powerful as it was had it been written any other way.

recommended for patient readers, for sure.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I randomly came across ALL MY GOODBYES at the American Library in Paris. I checked it out because it passed the first-sentence-and-random-sentence test (read the first sentence, and if you like it, flip to a random page and read a random sentence, and if you like that, flip to another random page and read another random sentence, etc.) I'm so glad I came across this strange, compelling little novel.

It's beautiful, fragmentary, elusive, and mysterious, the kind of book I always hope to write, but which is not so easy to write--the kind of book my publisher would never publish because it's so fragmentary, elusive, and mysterious. It's more impressionistic than narrative, dreamlike and intense.

I especially appreciate the observations, both wry and poignant, on the introvert's need to move on, to explore a city only up to a point before escaping to some other city. I've read it twice and am trying to find any other books by this author translated into English.

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

An unnamed narrator leaves South America to try and find - something - in Europe, but only finds work and love that cannot fill an emptiness, a restlessness in her. She often tells us she has a bad heart. Perhaps she does. What would that mean? Back home she is finally enchanted by a crude, cruel, vital man. He is murdered. It's less about the troubling idea she may have arranged it than this portrait of a lucid, completely unmoored person, and the way life is refracted through her 'bad heart'.

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maria Dimópulos's easy lyricism lulls you deceptively into this story of crime. But also one where the gruesome crime is only secondary to the way more interesting insights and thoughts (and voice!) of the narrator. Masterfully written and for a work with so fragmented a plotline (almost every paragraph is a jump in the timeline of the story), this was still able to capture my attention throughout.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strange, I liked this book, but I don't think I can tell you what happened. Written in a stream of consciousness manner, the chronology was baffling. The protagonist doesn't like to stay in one place for too long so names come then return or her memory is in that much turmoil. I NEVER gave up on this book. The writing was lyrical to me and just kept on keeping on hoping I would have an epiphany.

[Esther · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow this was a spooooky fragmented book, very sensory, all about trauma, and murder, and memory, and escape what a fckin read!!!!! Rly loved, ate this shit RIGHT up

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was about half way through All My Goodbyes by Argentinian author Mariana Dimópulos, and a bit baffled by its fragmentary style, when I remembered Michael Orthofer’s indispensable The Complete Review Guide to Contemporary World Fiction. Bless him, he is the soul of brevity and tells me exactly what I need to know in less than four short pages.

Short summary: famous South American authors who cast a long shadow – Borges, Márquez, Llosa and Fuentes. √Yes, I have read ’em all. Only Isabel Allende broke through the period of repression under Pinochet et al. √Yes, have read her too). Then this bit:

… only recently have a post-Boom generation come to the fore. Many writers have now repudiated magical realism and embraced American pop and consumer culture with as much fervour as the older generation denounced American imperialism. The McOndo movement – its name openly mocking Garcia Márquez’s Macondo, the setting of One Hundred Years of Solitude – is one of the most prominent recent literary trends… (p. 389)

So, thus armed, I turn to Orthofer’s summary of Argentina’s contemporary literature. Argentina, in the early C20th was wealthy, culturally aligned with the US and Europe, and with a thriving literary culture. Borges is the towering figure, distinctive and influential. There are others but the one that interests me is the one mentioned alongside Borges in the Giramondo blurb for All My Goodbyes: Julio Cortázar (1914-1984).

… Hopscotch (1963, English 1966) is one of the major novels of the Latin American Boom. (p.190) The first section of the novel is a conventional story, and Cortázar said that the nearly one hundred supplementary chapters of the second were expendable. The protagonist of this soul-searching novel is Horacio Oliveira, who describes his unfulfilled life in first Paris and then Buenos Aires. As the author explains, the novel’s 155 chapters can be – but do not have to be – read in the order in which they were printed. Cortázar supplies instructions for an alternative sequence, which ultimately leave the reader caught in an infinite loop. While Cortázar’s presentation might appear to be a gimmick, it is carefully and well done and allows for different readings of the text, including the traditional one of front to back. His novel 62: A Model Kit (1968, English 1972) builds on Hopscotch, specifically the sixty-second chapter of the earlier novel, putting into practice the theory outlined there, of a new kind of novel. Melding place – the three locales of the novel: Paris, London, and Vienna – and presenting fragmentary material, this novel also demands more active participation from the reader. (p.390)

Now, I’m starting to make more sense of All My Goodbyes. I certainly seem to be caught in a loop, and since the narrative is all over the place (just like its narrator, flitting from one place to another with no apparent purpose), perhaps it wouldn’t matter what order I read the pages in. √Yes, she’s describing an unfulfilling life in places on the other side of the world. What’s more, the settings (Málaga, Madrid, Heidelberg, Berlin) are indistinguishable from one another as if all cities are the same, signified by universal markers of modern urban life such as Ikea, a bakery, an anonymous auto-parts supplier and the ubiquitous café. All her jobs are mundane and badly paid and all of them involve unreasonable working conditions.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/11/08/a...

[m. · Rating 5 out of 5]

wow.

[Steve Sanderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an intriguing, challenging novel centering on the disconnected life of a young Argentine woman who is rootless in the world, constantly leaving people who ostensibly care for her. The book can't quite be pigeonholed, which is a fine compliment, as far as I'm concerned. It's a ruminative study of how little we are truly connected to our fellow humans and to our places in the world. One readily recognizes the literature of specific places so easily identified with John Ehle or William Faulkner or the literature of displacement, which is booming these days. Pachinko, The Sympathizer, Home Fire, etc. There's even a literature of communities of displacement, viz., Half-Broken Things. But this novel is of a person unstuck in space, who moves easily between Berlin and Heidelberg or Málaga and Patagonia. Each time she moves, she takes but a small bag, never including her own affection. She leaves nothing behind but the regrets of others. The style is very much the author's own. It might be called micro-narrative, focusing as it does on micro-scale description -- the shape of a glass, the position of her arm, the feel of night air, the view from a hotel window near the bus station. It can be alluring, and would be more so if the protagonist were more congenial. But congeniality is not the coin of this realm; murder is. Without fear of spoiling, I can say that interspersed vignettes from different parts of the protagonist's life break apart the overall shape of her character and then bring it back together at the bloody end. Even though we travel along with her, we never really get a feel for place, other than the inside of her head. But her central message -- according to me, at least -- is that there is no whole self, but that doesn't mean we can't spend our lives thinking about ourselves and no one else. Finally, and importantly, this novel was translated beautifully. The prose is spare and sharp. I'm glad to have read it and look forward to seeing others' views.

[Cherise Wolas · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a strange and interesting novel. I read this after reading Erpenbeck's Not A Novel: A Memoir in Pieces, which wasn't really a memoir, and All My Goodbyes is a novel, that is in pieces - the chronology is all cut up, and we are taken back and forth with the narrator as she remembers the past or experiences the present, as she moves from place to place, an inveterate seeker who cannot settle, but perhaps now has. We're told she's called Luisa in Malaga, and Lola in Barcelona, though her name might not be either, and isn't referred to again. She's Argentinian, the only daughter with older brothers, a mother who died when she was young, and a father, a physicist, who in his unwitting nihilism, removes from the narrator whatever it is that she sees - the sun is not just the sun, but... the clouds are actually... She is restless, leaves home in her early 20s, and is peripatetic, willing to live the so-called artist's life, though she is not an artist. She does basic jobs - waitressing, working at a bakery, at an IKEA, as she travels, settles, and leaves various cities and countries. Along the way, she meets and leaves people, lovers - Alexander, Stefan; friends, Julia and her son Kolya, and in Patagonia, where she arrives to pick fruit during the summer, she meets Marco Cupin and his mother Madame Cupin. She is always looking for a place where she can "recline without a shred of skepticism, trusting completely in the resilience of chairs and beds." A woman who is constantly changing her identity, who begins to weave her story through memories and impressions.

[Dorie · Rating 5 out of 5]

All My Goodbyes
by Mariana Dimopulos
Translated from Spanish by Alice Whitmore.
2010 Argentina
Transit Books
4.5 /5.0

I absolutely fell in love with this book. Not at first. The fragmented paragraphs, once I got use to it, really added to the overall feeling of being lost and alienation. The Argentinean writer masters it in this novel. The constant movement, the running from murders she will never escape, this novella about a woman who feels broken, down on herself and lost, only finding solace in leaving places....departing....so she is constantly moving between Berlin, Madrid and Heidelberg, according to her frame if mind. Each place has significance to her.
Brilliant....beautiful....unforgiving and unforgettable. A must read.

"My freedom always implies the slavery of another. So, my heart asks (and at heart I'm no good): if I enslave myself, does that mean someone else is set free"

"He was naive with his wisdom, a well- intentioned butcher of innocence. On the weekend we'd go canoeing on the river and get ice cream on Avenida Maipu. The cars we saw racing by were converted chemical energy into kinetic energy, and the trees were using gravity to stay still because, even though they had roots, without gravity they would be floating in the sky. At night I would dream, inevitably, of floating trees."

[Renee Mihulka · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars
The fragmented style is both a strength and a weakness of this novella. It heightens the unsettled feeling surrounding the protagonist and creates a sense of anticipation around the murders she is being questioned about. However, it also makes it both difficult to follow the narrative and to connect with the protagonist. And although I appreciate the depth of irony, the intensity and the detailed snippets of a young woman’s life, I found the book hard to get into.
Dimópulos’ writing is unquestionably superb. The language is at times rich and elaborate, delving into detail, but at other times blunt and bare, striking at the truth.

A deeply ironic novella that is sure to entertain and challenge lovers of literary fiction and readers with an interest in South American voices.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

I dropped a star off this book since I did not the fragmentary structure. Dimopoulos' young female narrator bounces from situation to situation, from South America to Europe, and each situation is represented in a series of story fragments that are then interwoven with one another to complete the novel. I believe the intent was for the novel to climax with tension achieved through the echoing of the shared similarities to the various endings of each fragmented story. Unfortunately, this did not work for me. I was distracted by the structure, feeling it was neither original nor did it add to the enjoyment of the novel over a standard sequential structure. Despite that I enjoyed the prose and characters and look forward to another effort by the author.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part of a series by Sydney-based publisher Giramondo, called Southern Latitudes, that focuses on translating works from South America, this is an impressive novel. Dimópulos fragments the narrative into short chunks that go back in forth in time as she follows the narrator through her travels in Europe and then back in her home country of Argentina, gradually shedding more light on her life and her involvement in a murder. Well worth checking out.

[Aleesha · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me some time to become accustomed to the fluid way time and narrative structure is treated in this novel, but it became the most intriguing part for me. From the start, the narrator made me feel unsettled, and this uneasiness only increases until the end. The last page felt like a kick to the stomach, and the implications of the conclusion stayed with me for hours afterwards.

[Justus · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had left for the sake of leaving, nothing more.

This thin novel tells, in scattered sketches, of years of aimless peregrinations. The narrator leaves Argentina in her early 20s and spends a decade in Europe. Even when she stays in a city for an extended spell, she's still restless. "I’d lived in three different houses during the short time I’d been in Heidelberg, and four different cities within the space of a year."

In each of her stops the pattern repeats: she settles into a kind of routine that gradually wears on her until, for no real good reason, in a fit of nomadic insanity, she suddenly leaves with no fixed destination in mind. Hence the "goodbyes" of the title.

I never saw any of them again. I never spoke to any of them again, never replied to any of their messages. I put an end to them all, I didn’t leave a trace, didn’t feel a trace of remorse. These are all my crimes: all my goodbyes.

This fairly straightforward story is made slightly more interesting by its intensely fractured telling. It is told in a very non-linear way, often in fragments as short as just a paragraph and rarely more than a page or two. We'll get a short scene in Malaga (from her earliest days in Europe) then jump to a scene in Heidelberg (from nearly a decade later).

The enraged customer returns to the Heidelberg bakery and I manage to hurl a jar of jam which hits him in the shoulder, but doesn’t break. The jar rolls along the floor and still doesn’t break. At that moment, more than ever, I despise the Germans’ world-famous quality-assurance standards.

On the whole I found All My Goodbyes fine but not especially memorable. It doesn't help that the whole point is that that narrator spends her life overwhelmed with ennui, unable to form attachments, incapable of being happy (or even, for that matter, feeling sad), and constantly moving.

But one thing I really liked -- and is especially uncommon in books! -- is the portrayal of moving to a new country where you don't speak the language fluently. The narrator moves from Argentina to Germany and, at the beginning, she barely speaks German. Just enough to get a job in a bakery but not well enough to do the job smoothly.

I loved all these sections because I could identify so easily. Customers who come in ask for a "Krug" of "Brombeere" and neither of those words are (yet) in your limited vocabulary. The intense frustration. The small kindness of the one (why only one!?) customer who, after a moment, points at the shelf containing the "jar" of "blackberry" jam. It clicks. Ahhh. But then repeat it for dozens of things.

Unless someone has tried to do stuff in a foreign language it is hard to convey just how dumb it makes you. Suddenly basic arithmetic that schoolchildren complete with ease is beyond you. This was my favorite passage in the entire book:

I would have liked to tell him this in Spanish, in order to express my skepticism with a hint of (perhaps overly facile) irony, but stranded as I was in his linguistic territory I was forbidden the luxury of subtlety and had to settle for a simple “no.”

Of course, layered on top of this is all the unthinking cultural imperialism slash colonialism that you'd expect from in a situation like this, a South American living in Europe. In another scene she meets her boyfriend's academic friends:

One of the party, who apparently hadn’t been informed of my origins (“Aren’t you Turkish?”) was busy disparaging the politics of Latin America. He’d traveled to several countries in the Americas and had confirmed for himself the backwardness of our ideas and the corruption of our institutions. He was one of those ignorant know-it-alls who manage to gatecrash every gathering.

Despite these moments of brilliance (almost all from her stay in Berlin when she first arrives in Germany), mostly this is a book about someone who spends her entire life running away, which might be something we can identify with, to some extent, but I just could never bring myself to love it.

I’d fallen in love with them both, mother and son. And yet, what is one to do, when faced with oneself? Cut and run, if that’s what you know best.

[Heike Lttrr · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an amazing novel! There's a blurb on the cover of the copy I borrowed from the library that includes the words "addictive" and "wonderfully strange" and I think these words perfectly characterize the language of this novel. Told in many different, mostly short sections, the novel propels itself forward through the narrator's telling of strands of different timelines - travel, jobs, places, people that she left behind because of a ceaseless restlessness that grows in her when a place or situation becomes too familiar. She criticizes herself for these leave-takings, but leaves nonetheless, because of this feeling that can't remain unaddressed. Until she meets Marco back in Argentina, the country she left at 23 to explore the world.

All of that stops when she lands in a remote mountain farm in southern Patagonia, working on a farm picking berries and eventually, after half a year there, becoming entangled with a man (Marco) she believes she loves. But the thread of the violent death that kills him and his mother weaves throughout all the other fragments of her memory of the ten years previous, pulling us along with the narrator as we see here trying to make sense of the loss of the future she seemed to truly want - a future of her choice that was taken away with the surprise of one night.

This is a glorious novel. I had trouble putting it down. One of my absolute favourite sections of the novel appears on page 32, just as a reader I was starting to make some good sense of the whirlwind of people and places that were quickly introduced to us in the early pages of the novel:
"I told dona Carmen about my father and the family laboratory while we scoured (as she used to put it) the patio of the Almagro hotel. Then I told Alexander, in Heidelberg, about my father and dona Carmen, and about Stefan in Malaga, while we drank watery coffee at the university. I told Julia, in Berlin, about my odd jobs and love affairs as we stood around in the kitchen not eating dinner, nibbling on bread like a pair of sleepy birds, leaning first on one leg then the other. But with Marco, ten years later, when I returned to Argentina and spent a year on the Del Monje farm, I never spoke of any of this, and he never asked. There was no need--perhaps because the imitation of love between us was sufficient."
This summary is just so good - what a blast through the people and places we've just been through - in fragments - with the narrator. So. Good.

[Joy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mariana Dimópulos has created a fascinating character in All My Goodbyes. This restless nomadic young lady from Buenos Aires keeps her real self obscure most of the time even though she's narrating for us readers her travels, jobs, relationships and experiences. Even her name changes (Luisa in Malaga, Lola in Barcelona). She therefore makes an interesting psychological study.

The information we gather about her is: she was groomed into a scientist life by her pedantic physicist father, her mother died when she was in kindergarten, she studied biology, organic and inorganic chemistry, she is intelligent and extremely observant, she abhors convention, routine and the mundane, she has a heightened awareness of social perception and hierarchy. She seems to have no small amount of self-loathing, saying she has a "bad heart" and has no idea how to be happy. She feels compelled to bolt just when her life in a particular city is beginning to root. She blasts capitalism, patriarchy and European smugness & superiority. Her defiance is in her unmoored and free state, defying any and all expectations of her.

Quite a few instances, she would impart information to the reader and turn around, say she was lying. One could say she's an unreliable narrator. I found myself reading carefully to parse out this character's real self and motivation. One of the more simplistic explanations is that she is wary of connections and commitment, she leaves people before they can abandon or reject her. But the place and man she eventually felt content with seems to refute this. I think all of us carry trauma, big and small, visible and hidden, which can manifest in unexpected ways. In any case, this would make for a good book club selection discussion.

[Carrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Beautiful prose, but strange story. The narrator can't bear to stay in one place for long (all the goodbyes) and this chronicles her time in a handful of places (Madrid, Malaga, Berlin, Heidelberg, Buenos Aires, Patagonia) but none of it is told sequentially - it is almost as if we follow her memory as it jumps from place to place and significant person in each place. She finds employment and a connection at each juncture, but sheds them like a snake sheds skin - with no remorse or regret. Her ability to leave possessions behind is interesting and admirable too and this compulsion almost comes off as a disease or a problem - she talks about her "bad" heart that won't let her love or cling or stay. Since this is so antithetical to my world view, it kept my interest and kept me reading. Also intriguing was her allusions to a brutal murder - which never is fully explained -- is she involved? Is that why she is unable to settle anywhere? It took me awhile to get the hang of jumping around and identifying each place (Heidelberg was the bakery, Berlin was the IKEA and Julia, Patagonia was the murder and Marco, etc) but it is such a short read that I didn't get too frustrated and tried to just soak in the experiences like she did. Overall, I wanted to know more.

[Courtney · Rating 5 out of 5]

"These are all my crimes: all my goodbyes."

All My Goodbyes is a short, sparse novel with a jumbled narrative. We follow an unnamed protagonist from Argentina to Europe, and back, over the course of a decade. She's prone to leaving, to running away. She takes on odd jobs and temporary homes as she hops from place to place, but one thing remains the same: she never stays.

We find out early on that there was a murder, and that's what we keep coming back to throughout the book. Each period of her life is told in vignettes, mixed together, without chapter breaks or clear timelines. As you read, you begin to put everything together on your own, from the place to the time to the job to the people. While it's set up in a confusing way, it didn't feel confusing to me as a reader—it felt like the only way the story could be told.

This was a quick read, and I think the momentum of reading through it quickly is important. It only takes a couple of hours to read, so you could easily read it one long sitting.

[Ocean G · Rating 2 out of 5]

I hate to say this but this reminds me why I should stay away from contemporary best sellers and stick to classics (which I seldom actually do, but still).

As others commenters have mentioned, the style is extremely jumpy, and I imagine this is supposed to be a reflection of the narrator, who is very flighty and keeps changing her job, her country and her surroundings. However, her descriptions of every place and situation sound so similar, and she keeps jumping around so much through space and time, that I can never quite tell what she's referring to.

I recognize that this might be my issue. Maybe I'm just not built for this type of novel, or maybe I just don't get some deeper meaning. Maybe if I had a different mindset I would have found it beautiful.

Paradoxically I think if I had read it in the original Spanish I would have gotten more out of it, since I would have had to read it much more slowly and with a much more discerning eye.

[Pakis Ami · Rating 5 out of 5]

The novel unfolds like found puzzle pieces and comes together like remembering what the other sides of these grey pieces look like. I find myself mourning my parents who are alive. Only once does the narrator reveal herself but magically we know her complete interior because she writes facts, behaviors, scenes and we can’t infer anything else but hurt, a deep, ancient hurt, the burning near the genes hurt our families can leave on us, that we then repeat throughout our lives throughout our pathetic attempts to leap out of that cycle. But then she found a happiness. And he killed it.

[Wassim · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think I heard about this on the Life on Books podcast, and I thought it sounded it interesting, and on the surface, it should be: it's a novella told in unbroken narration (there are no chapters) whose timeline jumps without warning, in which the protagonist recounts her travels from Argentina to and across Europe, detailing the people she meets and jobs she's worked, all of which is set against a murder that she may or may not have played a role in.

While I wasn't expecting a thriller, the murder and its investigation seemed like an afterthought against the backdrop of the protagonist detailing her journeys. That's really it. Reading through, one can't escape the feeling that Dimópulos wrote this as introspective story, then decided to toss in a half-baked murder plot for extra texture. What's more, despite being less than one-hundred-forty pages, All My Goodbyes struggles to justify even being that long; had it been any longer, I most likely would have DNFed and moved on.

It doesn't help that the writing is often weak and repetitive. A couple of simple examples:

She, Julia, who was pure understanding, who was the patron saint of the mentally ill, who believed in explanations and the happiness of others.

This can easily be pared down without losing any of its effect:

Julia, patron saint of the mentally ill, who believed in explanations and the happiness of others.

If we're referring to someone as a "patron saint" who believes "in explanations and the happiness of others", it's safe to assume they're "pure understanding" (or pure of heart, more broadly).

Another:

We’re never still. Even rest is a kind of movement,” I told a man a few months ago, a man lying prostrate and still in his bedroom. An old, sick man. His hands and feet were useless to him.

I'm not sure what the intention here is; is it rhythm? Dramatic effect? Because all I see is bloat. But this is also an easy fix:

“We’re never still. Even rest is a kind of movement,” I told an old man a few months ago, lying prostrate and still in his bedroom, his hands and feet useless.

There's no need to repeat "man" three times in the such a short space, and once that's solved, the rest of the passage is simple: since it's made clear from the off that he's an "old man", we can remove the rest, and remove the mention of him being "sick", since this excerpt already tells us that 1) he’s old; 2) he’s “lying prostrate and still”; 3) his hands and feet are useless. This communicates his health just as well as being explicitly told he’s sick.

I don't know how much of this is down to translation, but even if that were the problem, a stronger translation still wouldn't fix the inherent issue of this just not being particularly interesting.

I wanted to like it more than I did, but frankly, it was a disappointment.