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. ( )

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

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." ( )