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bookabecca 's review for:
The Cemetery of Untold Stories
by Julia Alvarez
I forever and always love everything that Julia Alvarez writes! This new novel of hers did not disappoint. The set up is this: a novelist decides to retire to the Dominican Republic (where her family is from) and bury all unfinished drafts of her novels in a Cemetery for Untold Stories. But the stories will not be silenced, for either the living or the dead.
Not only is this a beautiful collage of the stories that make us who we are, but it’s a commentary on narratives themselves. What makes a story? What happens if they go untold? Does the telling unleash something in the teller, the audience? Is it our duty to release some and to keep some buried?
I love these questions and the way they are dearly held. I also love the many Julia Alvarez Easter eggs that are packed into the telling: the semi-autobiographical elements woven into the tales, the main character (a proxy for Alvarez) being named Alma like the narrator in Alvarez’s novel Saving the World, the last line of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents being held up and examined as commentary about Alma’s craft. And probably many more.
My critiques are few and far between: I thought the frame of the story (the set up of the cemetery) took up more space than it deserved at the beginning. I also wanted the book to end with Alma’s walk in the evening instead of with the future of the cemetery, which felt a little too forced.
But these are minor quips for an otherwise masterpiece of story. I’m grateful for it.
Not only is this a beautiful collage of the stories that make us who we are, but it’s a commentary on narratives themselves. What makes a story? What happens if they go untold? Does the telling unleash something in the teller, the audience? Is it our duty to release some and to keep some buried?
I love these questions and the way they are dearly held. I also love the many Julia Alvarez Easter eggs that are packed into the telling: the semi-autobiographical elements woven into the tales, the main character (a proxy for Alvarez) being named Alma like the narrator in Alvarez’s novel Saving the World, the last line of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents being held up and examined as commentary about Alma’s craft. And probably many more.
My critiques are few and far between: I thought the frame of the story (the set up of the cemetery) took up more space than it deserved at the beginning. I also wanted the book to end with Alma’s walk in the evening instead of with the future of the cemetery, which felt a little too forced.
But these are minor quips for an otherwise masterpiece of story. I’m grateful for it.