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cj82487's review
4.0
An ending worth the journey
An ending that has everything a book needs: a twist, a reunion with a long lost friend, death of a loved one, a new found romance, and a promise to live a life worth living. I'm at a loss for words because of the death of a character that made the book worth reading and was not only lovable but relatable. I learned from her and want to continue to learn from her, and yet her time has passed. A smidge of happiness tucked into the grief makes the entire book memorable in the most pleasant of ways and worth the journey traveled to get there.
Life After Life - Rustling in the Breeze Blog
An ending that has everything a book needs: a twist, a reunion with a long lost friend, death of a loved one, a new found romance, and a promise to live a life worth living. I'm at a loss for words because of the death of a character that made the book worth reading and was not only lovable but relatable. I learned from her and want to continue to learn from her, and yet her time has passed. A smidge of happiness tucked into the grief makes the entire book memorable in the most pleasant of ways and worth the journey traveled to get there.
Life After Life - Rustling in the Breeze Blog
emilyrowellbrown's review
2.0
I skimmed the middle third. The bits recounting and honoring the lives of the elderly were beautifully executed, but the plotline itself proved lackluster and distracted, if anything, from the book's merits.
stevienlcf's review
5.0
McCorkle’s novel follows several of the residents of Pine Haven Retirement Community and, to insure that the novel is not too claustrophobic, several of the citizens of the North Carolina town in which the facility is located. The moral center of the tale is Sadie, a wheelchair bound former elementary school teacher who “has always seen the sunnier side of life.” Her gentle demeanor has attracted Abby, the twelve year old girl whose bickering parents live next door to Pine Haven, and whose best friend is her dog, Dollbaby, who has gone missing. Abby’s wish, other than for the return of Dollbaby, is that her narcissistic mother would “wear mom pants, some nice high-waisted stretch denim mom pants.” Abby’s dad is a childhood friend of Joanna, the formerly suicidal hospice volunteer who has been charged with recording the last words and memories of the dying. Joanna has befriended C.J., the young single-mother who provides manicures and pedicures to the elderly at Pine Haven. C.J. was the product of a liaison that took place near a Carolina Jessamine, a native vine. C.J. muses what she would have been named had “her father – unknown creature that he is – had only flipped her [mother] over.”
McCorkle deftly juggles intersecting stories and fills her book with pathos, sorrow, humor, and indelible characters – Rachel Silverman, the sophisticated lawyer who comes to North Carolina to be near the cemetery where her deceased lover and his wife are buried, and Stanley Stone, the debonair lawyer who had taken his wife for granted until she fell ill and is feigning dementia so that his troubled son will give him space – while showing us how life is filled with choices and chance.
McCorkle deftly juggles intersecting stories and fills her book with pathos, sorrow, humor, and indelible characters – Rachel Silverman, the sophisticated lawyer who comes to North Carolina to be near the cemetery where her deceased lover and his wife are buried, and Stanley Stone, the debonair lawyer who had taken his wife for granted until she fell ill and is feigning dementia so that his troubled son will give him space – while showing us how life is filled with choices and chance.
maureenr's review
3.0
This would have been 4-5 stars, BUT just a terrible, terrible denouement. Suddenly I was in a Sue Grafton novel. before that - lovely character studies, lovely pace to match the subject matter, nice prose. But yuck, I can't get beyond the ending.
nicolebonia's review
3.0
Life after Life takes place in and around a nursing home in North Carolina. There was quite a bit of reflection for me on my own life as I read this, as almost everyone is staking stock and wondering about the choices they made as they try to make the best of the time they have left. It took a while for me to get into this book. There are many, many characters, and the style was rambling as they flitted from thought to thought about their current situations as well as their regrets. I wish that the voices were more distinct. My interest waned as everyone seemed to run together in a litany of missed opportunities, complaints and mistakes. As the story unfolds it becomes more clear how all of them are interlinked, and I enjoyed the unraveling of some of those connections. McCorkle has many wonderful insights and poignant moments that were almost lost to me in the way the story was structured, but I have to admit to feeling moved by the end.
corrinpierce's review
2.0
Disappointing. Not sure why it was on so many best-of-the-year lists. Predictable, caricature-filled.
tonythep's review
4.0
Life After Life is driven by McCorkle's wonderfully crafted characters. These people that live or work in and around a retirement community in North Carolina intertwine their commentaries about themselves and each other creating a mosaic of memory. Death and dying are certainly major subjects here (perhaps because of the setting), but themes of regret, deceit, and ultimately, second chances are explored as well. The ending of the book was somewhat . . . shocking.
reader_cheryl's review
4.0
"Life After Life" is the title of this novel and is a title that addresses not just life after death, but also fresh starts.
The primary character of the novel is Joanna. She is the owner of a local hot dog stand--left to her by her late father--but her primary job is to sit with the dying at Pine Haven Estates, a retirement community. She keeps two notebooks--one is the official one she turns over to the nurse when Joanna goes off duty--and the second one is a personal notebook, in which she keeps notes about everyone she sits with. It is her way of preventing them from disappearing--a trait she mastered early in life, and is still learning to undo.
Joanna's life after life involves returning to her hometown and facing the reputation she's gained as an Elizabeth Taylor; i.e. a woman of too many marriages. She also must deal with a difficult family situation--her mother died when she was gone, and her father isn't ready to forgive Joanna for that. Returning also involves dealing with Ben, her childhood friend, who is now in a loveless marriage, but has a daughter he adores. His wife, on the other hand, has plans to start a new life with someone of a much higher social status in town, a well-respected doctor who can't afford to have the secrets of his double (and more) life become public.
C.J.(Carolina Jasmine) is half Joanna's age, but the two are still best friends. C.J. also works at the nursing home--one of the many jobs she's had in her young life. C.J. has done whatever she had to do to survive , but she's determined her young son Kurt will have a childhood far better than C.J. had. If need be, she has the means to support a new life tucked away in a safe hiding place.
Pine Haven Estates is populated with unique characters as well--the highly respected lawyer Stanly Stone, who is faking dementia in the hopes his son will a life of his own, former third grade teacher Sadie Randolph, and Rachel Silverman, a new widow who left her Massachusetts home for this retirement community in Fulton, North Carolina, for reasons she keeps to herself--are just a few diverse residents living out the rest of their days with each other, and sometimes family, for company. In one way or another, each of the residents is looking for a new life--not always through death--in place of the one they used to have.
The possibility of a new life is what each of these characters faces at some point in the book, and following their journeys can take paths totally unexpected, which made this novel enjoyable to read.
The primary character of the novel is Joanna. She is the owner of a local hot dog stand--left to her by her late father--but her primary job is to sit with the dying at Pine Haven Estates, a retirement community. She keeps two notebooks--one is the official one she turns over to the nurse when Joanna goes off duty--and the second one is a personal notebook, in which she keeps notes about everyone she sits with. It is her way of preventing them from disappearing--a trait she mastered early in life, and is still learning to undo.
Joanna's life after life involves returning to her hometown and facing the reputation she's gained as an Elizabeth Taylor; i.e. a woman of too many marriages. She also must deal with a difficult family situation--her mother died when she was gone, and her father isn't ready to forgive Joanna for that. Returning also involves dealing with Ben, her childhood friend, who is now in a loveless marriage, but has a daughter he adores. His wife, on the other hand, has plans to start a new life with someone of a much higher social status in town, a well-respected doctor who can't afford to have the secrets of his double (and more) life become public.
C.J.(Carolina Jasmine) is half Joanna's age, but the two are still best friends. C.J. also works at the nursing home--one of the many jobs she's had in her young life. C.J. has done whatever she had to do to survive , but she's determined her young son Kurt will have a childhood far better than C.J. had. If need be, she has the means to support a new life tucked away in a safe hiding place.
Pine Haven Estates is populated with unique characters as well--the highly respected lawyer Stanly Stone, who is faking dementia in the hopes his son will a life of his own, former third grade teacher Sadie Randolph, and Rachel Silverman, a new widow who left her Massachusetts home for this retirement community in Fulton, North Carolina, for reasons she keeps to herself--are just a few diverse residents living out the rest of their days with each other, and sometimes family, for company. In one way or another, each of the residents is looking for a new life--not always through death--in place of the one they used to have.
The possibility of a new life is what each of these characters faces at some point in the book, and following their journeys can take paths totally unexpected, which made this novel enjoyable to read.
jmooremyers's review
4.0
favorite passage:
"... she was finally able to see her father for what he was: a worn-out man who had worked very hard and lived the only way he knew how, rigid and unforgiving from his own upbringing, too scared to have ever ventured beyond that knowledge, frightened by the thought of death, ashamed of his weak nakedness, and in need of love with no sense of how to ask for it." [page 57]
"... she was finally able to see her father for what he was: a worn-out man who had worked very hard and lived the only way he knew how, rigid and unforgiving from his own upbringing, too scared to have ever ventured beyond that knowledge, frightened by the thought of death, ashamed of his weak nakedness, and in need of love with no sense of how to ask for it." [page 57]