BOOK REVIEW

IN READING AND WRITING

Submitted By: Rica Mae A. Permejo

Submitted To: Ms. Leonidesa Nierves
 IN OTHER LIFETIMES ALL I’VE LOST COMES
BACK TO ME

Courtney Sender

Introduction
You wake up each day feeling older than your years. You don’t know how
much time you have left and the thought of spending it alone is depressing. Memories
from happier times come flooding back and you start wondering what life would be
like if you made different choices. Visions of your former self dance through your
head and you feel a deep sadness for the path your life has taken.

Summary
The narrator is the biggest regret of their lives—the love of their lives that they
let get away from them thirty-eight to eighteen years ago. In the meantime, they had
families, furniture, jobs, and soccer teams. They sat in their wooden house in their
wooden chair and looked out their wood-framed window at the wooden swing hanging
from the tree in their front yard. They prayed for just one of them to change their
minds, turn around, and please come back to them. They would give anything for the
life they wanted, which was simple, unambitious, and looked like their parents' lives.
They would have given up their arm, their house, their heating, their sex, or sex every
hour; they would have fought off armies; and they would have lost their name. For
twenty years, the narrator has been willing to become the woman she would have been
with any of the seven different women. With B, C, D, E, X, Y, and V, she would have
lived in a house in the suburbs, traveled, rented, and been always going somewhere
new. She would have stayed Jewish and been a daughter and a writer, and she would
have sung showtunes in the car and in the shower. She waited and waited, and her
heart became harder and her life smaller, and she looked out that window hopeful
every morning and hopeless every night. One day, she noticed that she never went
outside and that out the window was a porch and a set of stairs that no one climbed,
and beyond that, a swing on a stretch of grass that ended in a fence. The narrator is
staring at a group of people, many of whom are old and bald. They are holding flowers
and are empty-handed, while D has a book wrapped in newspaper and V has a small
canvas. The narrator is sadder than it is possible to be because if only one single
person had peeled off like a rogue grape from a cluster, their whole life would have
been set. They would have learned Spanish, Urdu, Hebrew, art history, black history,
and western thought. Each one would have loved them for different reasons. The
narrator imagines what life would have been like had they not been separated from
their family. They would have had tattoos, psoriasis, strong calves from soccer, W and
C strong arms from squash, D dry, B wet, V an alcoholic, X skin-and-bones, C and W
laughing kids who loved their grandparents, B and Y kids who hated them, and D kids
who looked down on them. B and Y and V would have protected them, walking down
dark alleyways: B with an arm around their shoulders, Y always half a step ahead, and
V with a knife in his pocket; X, W, and C I'd have protected. D, whom they loved
best, they would have killed. They have been busy, with wives to buy groceries for
and children to put on airplanes that will safely cross continents. They have lived in
cities and countries like Chicago and Miami, in places they never thought to imagine
like Chile and South Africa, and in the town where they grew up. The most important
details in this text are the conversations between the narrator and the narrator's three
boys, B, C, and D. B and C had office lives already fully formed, while D and V were
strivers. The narrator tries to fill in the details of their lives but is unable to do so.
Finally, the narrator remembers that B was their best friend, D was their best art
partner, Y was their best looking, X was their best listener, C was smartest, W was
kindest, and V was saddest, and the narrator remembers the way their backs looked
when they left. The narrator then remembers the sound of the car as they drove away.
The narrator reflects on the ways in which their past loves have hurt them. They
realize that they have spent their whole life waiting for a single person to look behind
them and say, Oops, and that they have become something else. They try to tell them
that they are still humans, but they know that so much unused hope drives them crazy
and rots their hearts. They ask them to come in and say the words in their hearts: Yes,
come in. What are you waiting for? The narrator is told to go home by their major
loves, who have left their homes and wrecked their lives. The narrator has welcomed
them in, taken their coats, found enough vases, chairs, and cups for the water, wine,
coffee, tea, beer, juice, and whiskey each will want, let them pet me, let them cry, and
kissed B's forehead and D's lips, C's neck, Y's chest, X's navel, W's hip, and V's thigh.
They look at the scene they have been watching by themselves through the window
since they were twenty, then thirty, then forty, then fifty, and so on. The wooden
swing is gone; the wood gave way a decade earlier; the great oak fell last spring; and
there was a flood three years ago. The minor loves go seeking, but the major loves
stay on. The narrator's rules are that if they can swing me on that swing, then yes. The
narrator is sitting by the window, watching the scene they have been watching by
themselves through the window since they were young. The minor loves go seeking,
but the major loves stay on. The narrator remembers what they have made themselves
forget so that they can say yes to them on an impossible, longed-for day. They ask the
minor love to change their mind and turn around and come back to them, and the
narrator promises to give anything for them. The most important details in this text are
that the narrator has not touched any of their loves today, major or minor, and that
each of them has taken a piece of them. This has caused the narrator to feel like they
have turned to wood, and they are being held, touched, and rocked by their loved ones
like a lover in their bed.

Moral Lesson:
When something truly matters to us, we go through major changes in our lives.
It affects all aspects of who we are: how we look, how we act, and even how we think.
What once felt like an insurmountable challenge suddenly feels within reach. And
when those challenges become familiar territory, they lose their power to scare us
away. That’s why it’s so important to keep fighting even when things get tough—
because sometime down the road, everything that we’ve lost will come back to us
again.

Suggestion: