I admire Julia Alvarez for her thoughtful stories! I have not yet read Afterlife, but a story about sisters will surely be a winner!

I was excited to see that Julia Alvarez had a new book out as I have really enjoyed her writing in the past. Antonia is a relatable character, and the story is thoughtful and important, particularly now. I just couldn't seem to connect to this book though. I expected to really love it, and felt like I should, but something about it just wasn't compelling as I expected. I would still recommend this book to others, though I wouldn't call is a "must-read." Alvarez is a great writer, but I would probably suggest one of her other books if trying to introduce her to someone.

A story about four sisters seemed perfect, and I settled down for a good reading experience. Antonia Vega, the narrator of this short, new novel, is a retired English professor in Vermont. Antonia's recent loss of her beloved husband, Sam, has turned her happy life into deep sorrow, and loneliness for him.

Just as she thought her life would be quiet as is her choice, a loner for life, Antonia gets a call that her sister is missing. The four sisters agreed to a birthday gathering, but her older sister never appears. The next challenge is finding a pregnant teenager from Mexico in her shed when she returns home. Antonia wants peace in her life, especially right now, but life has a different path set out for her.

All the sisters are quirky with a good dose of sibling rivalry in this short, compelling story of how life takes us where we least plan to visit. I loved Antonia's thoughts and her approach to working through the crises she encounters in her new solo life. Having sisters is also a blessing even when it is heartbreaking.

Thank you to the author, Algonquin Books, and NetGalley for the change to read this e-ARC.

Alvarez new adult novel is one of sisterhood with dash of humor yet, moving with the elements of loss and love.

The story explores the complex relationships among sisters. I don’t personally have siblings but I do have two daughter so I could relate in that way. Primary character, Antonia Vega, in the very beginning is stunned with grief. A year before, she and her husband, Sam, were driving separately to a restaurant near their Vermont home to celebrate her retirement when he suffered a fatal aneurysm. Antonia has suddenly lost her beloved spouse as well a successful career as a college professor and novelist.

As Antonia drifts through the days, one day a knock on the door reveals an undocumented Mexican worker. Antonia herself long ago emigrated from the Dominican Republic. Now here stands young Mario who wants her to help him reunite with his fiancee, Estela, who is also undocumented and stranded in Colorado.

Husband, Sam was a doctor who was widely known for his volunteer work and empathy. She knows he would have done all he could, to help as... “He was the bold one. She, the reluctant activist….” Therefore Antonia is hesitant.

Life carries on she celebrates her 66th birthday with her three sisters. While all possess very different personalities and demeanors, all of them are worried about their oldest sister, Izzy. She is a retired therapist who recently has been behaving erratically. When her phone goes dead and she fails to arrive for the party, the other sisters jump to her aid.
Then fate delivers surprising turns, as does the relationship between Mario and Estela. Antonia Is left to try and figure out what she can do for all of them and for herself.

While I am an only child it was compelling to see how sisters know how to push on each other’s weaknesses and then how powerfully they can lift each other up.

A book about the strength of family bonds.

This is a well written novel as one might expect from acclaimed writer Alvarez.

Julia Alvarez has held a place in my heart ever since I read IN THE TIME OF THE BUTTERFLIES as a teenager in the late 90's, so I'll read anything she writes about sisterhood. This book started slow for me but once it got moving, I was all in. It's a short, quick read and I felt very invested in the main character, Antonia, along with the many women who surround her. This is a moving tale of choosing to take care of those who need our help (be they family or strangers), while figuring out how to take care of ourselves at the same time.

Spectacular, poetry, current event, stream of consciousness, literature, grief, mental illness, family bounds, ethnicity and back again.

Julia Alvarez’ first adult novel in over a decade! Readers of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents will appreciate this mature, reflective and very contemporary novel. Antonia, the second oldest of four sisters from the Dominican Republic, is grieving the sudden death of her much adored husband, Sam. His loss has left her questioning how much energy she wants to give the outside world. She has been taking “little sips” of sadness, in an attempt to not become overwhelmed.

A series of events force her into reluctant engagement. An undocumented migrant from Mexico needs help making a phone call to his girlfriend who has recently crossed the border. It turns out that the coyotes need more money before they will let her travel to him. He also doesn’t have a place for her to stay once she gets there. And then her oldest sister goes missing after putting a down payment on an old motel with an eye towards creating an migrant artist colony in the wilds of western Massachusetts.

Antonia’s own Latina heritage allows her to reflect upon the discrimination that the migrants in her small town in Vermont face. As one of the few Spanish-speakers in her town, she is often called upon to help assist newcomers. When the local sheriff comes to her door, it is so that she can warn others about planned ICE raids. Antonia’s age and status as a longtime resident of her town turn her into a cultural go-between. The novel is at its best when Antonia is reflecting on what it means to be a more established immigrant and what responsibilities they have to newer Americans.

I finished this beautiful book several days ago and it continues to call to me. I keep dipping back into it to re-read passages. Some might dismiss this as taking advantage of the current political issues around immigration and human rights, and to those skeptics I say fuck you. This is a haunting, beautifully written story about life after tremendous loss, what it means to be human, and to recognize and celebrate humanity wherever you find it. Here, it's a pregnant undocumented girl who is more than a statistic. She is a real person who needs help and who, in turn, helps Antonia find a new path.

This should be popular with book clubs and community reading programs.

Highly recommended.

This book was received as an ARC from Algonquin Books in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own.

I did not know what to expect from this book but I can definitely tell you that I was thinking in a whole different direction than the book actually took. Antonia has one thing happen after another; Her husband dies, she retires from her job as a professor, her sister disappears and to top it all off, there is an undocumented pregnant teenager that appears on her doorstep. Just when Antonia thought she was done, a new problem arrives. Antonia embraces the path the Afterlife has put her on and use the lines from books she grew to love and in which words are very powerful, the world wants more from her. I really liked the fact that Antonia has accepted the path and used her knowledge and the gift of writing to get her through these tough times. Rather than give up and take the path of darkness and negativity, she has points of light and remained positive. A lot of people will embrace the message Julia Alvarez can expressed while writing this book. This definitely is a potential contender for our adult book club.

We will consider adding this title to our Adult Fiction collection at our library. This is why we give this book 5 stars.

Julia Alvarez is one of my favorite authors. Her roots lie in the Domincan Republic and all of her books are in some way related.

Alvarez is to the English language as Mozart is to music. Deeply entrancing, thought inducing and her writing is like a kaleidoscope held to the light that changes the way you see the world.

This book includes a series of sisters, as many of her books do. One of the sisters, Antonio, is recently widowed and is living in the depth of grief. Her husband, Sam, was an activist who sought to make the world a better place. Together, they tackled today's most pressing issues. As Antonio encounters situations she considers her actions by remembering what Sam would have done. In this way, Alvarez writes, she brings him back to life.

Antonio is a retired English professor and her vast knowledge of authors litter the text, adding depth and wonder.

I highly recommend this book. The resilience of these women are well worth the read and the inspirational value of this book will remain with me for many years.

Afterlife
By Julia Alvarez
2/12/20
5*

What a beautifully written book, touching on subjects that are so timely and relevant to my life: sisterhood, mental illness, death, immigration. I found myself highlighting passage after passage, hoping to remember the creative and insightful way Alvarez uses descriptive phrases. I felt drawn to the main character, Antonia, as she negotiated her “after life,” following her retirement and the death of her husband. Her “rules of sisterhood” felt so familiar, whether it be biological sisters or the sisters that we create in our lives. As the sister of a person with mental illness, I was touched and heartbroken by Antonia’s relationship with Izzy. I especially loved Antonia’s realization that “the only way not to let the people she loves die forever is to embody what she loved about them.” What an inspiring way to live and to create a legacy from those who have passed!

This was the first book that I have read by this author, but now I want to go back and read her other books! I can’t wait to recommend it for my book club, as there are so many interesting threads to discuss.

My thanks to NetGalley for an Advanced Readers Copy of this book. All opinions are my own and not biased in any way.

Marvelous. I see why there is so much buzz and why this book is so anticipated. Absolutely astounding and riveting. I really savored this rich novel.

Right up to the current minute, this lovely book contains many hot button issues without being preachy. Antonia, the central character who has been dealt a double blow, triple or quadruple if you count outside influences, had immigrated from the Dominican Republic. Her husband, who dies suddenly on the first page, was the town optometrist and was regarded as something of a local saint. They live in a small Vermont town where she has just retired from her position as a professor of English Lit at a local college.

But life intervenes and won't allow her to wallow in her grief, pulling her in several directions that as mentioned before, addresses the current immigration crisis, sisterly bonding, bi-polar illness, and answers the question of whether an up-to-date sticker on your car indicating you've donated to the policemen's guild save you from getting a ticket. Gracefully written and incorporating quite a bit of humor, highly recommended.

Another beautiful, heartfelt, exhilarating, insightful reading shakes you to the core, makes you question so many things you’ve done with your life.

The author tells us many thought-provoking issues starting from how to gather the pieces of your life after you lost your loved one, dynamics between sisterhood, their complex relationships, learning to put your needs first but also listening to people’s needs and extending your helpful hands, real and heartbreaking issues about undocumented immigrants, how to connect with the people who suffer from mental illness.

Antonia doesn’t know what to do after sudden death of her beloved husband but before rethinking about her afterlife, she has to deal with her sister’s vanishing: Izzy who is fighting with her mental illness. And of course she encounters with a girl at her door steps, pregnant and undocumented teenager. A fast and riveting start of the story hooks you from the beginning and keeping your attention alive till the end.

I’m so happy that grieving of Antonia was not depressing, bleak, disturbing and dark as I expected and I loved the idea that Antonia never wants to leave her husband and his memory behind, finding a creative way to keep his memory alive. Because we understand from the beginning, her husband has an important role to shape
Antonia’s identity throughout years. He taught her important life lessons and opening herself to the goodness, reaching her hands to help the other people. He was an amazing man and I loved their sacred relationship.

This was a memorable, gripping and meaningful and one of my fastest reading. I’m so happy that the author created this poignant, touchy story after 15 years later. And I hope she won’t stop writing in near future.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Algonquin Books for sharing this incredible book’s ARC COPY with me in exchange my honest review. And I’m so happy to see a talented writer back and create new remarkable stories.

I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
AfterLife by Julia Alvarez is the story of Antonia, a Latina lady originally from the Dominican Republic. She has just lost her husband Sam, a popular, well regarded doctor in small town Vermont.
Sam always went out of his way to be kind to everyone. He also advocated for undocumented workers who are vital to the local farming economy but constantly in fear of deportation.

Antonia has also just retired after many years as a professor of English Literature. She has no children but she certainly has family—three sisters who together form ‘the sisterhood’, although Antonia has always been seen as someone who isn’t as involved with the sisters as she should be!

Still, Antonia struggles with her ‘AfterLife’. Who is she apart from her late husband? What is the right thing to do? And...What is important to her in her own right? ‘Be yourself, everyone else is taken.’ It’s a magnet on Antonia’s fridge. It’s also something Antonia has to make true for herself.
A family crisis together with a forage into Sam’s passion of the local migrant situation provides growth and depth as Antonia discovers that there is an Afterlife, even if it isn’t always what one desires!

An excellent, thoughtful read!

Thanks you to Netgalley for this advanced cop for review.

As I approached the end of this book my mind already started wandering as to how I was going to review it. It was a quiet story full of rich themes. Important themes. And the one word that pops into my mind if I had to summarize my feelings about this book is appreciate. I appreciate this book. The same way I might appreciate what goes into a good meal even if it wasn't memorable. I felt like I was on the outside looking in on this story where I prefer to be completely immersed. The characters were real. I tend to prefer multi-dimensional flawed characters yet despite having those qualities they still felt one note. I wish I could have felt more attached to the characters and the story but in the end I just found myself appreciative of all that the author did to craft this story but the telling of it just made me feel removed..

Julia Alvarez's Afterlife is both an exquisite and a straight forward exploration of how we manage loss and the changing shape of family. Her central character, Antonia, is one of four sisters originally from the Dominican Republic, now living in the U.S. Antonia has spent her life as a college English professor and writer. On the day of her retirement, her beloved husband Sam is felled by a heart attack and never makes it to the restaurant where they plan to meet and celebrate. Sam was the "good cop" in their marriage, and now Antonia considers how much of that role she wants to taken on, both to broaden her own life and to keep some aspect of Sam present.

Meanwhile, Antonia and her two younger sisters wrestle with how to manage Izzy the unpredictable eldest of the foursome. And there is Antonia's larger community in Vermont where small farmers are barely hanging on by employing undocumented immigrants under the table

Really, the above is a summary, not a review, but I'm summarizing because I want to highlight the sort of ordinary lives Alvarez can make luminescent. These characters aren't heroes, they're ordinary individuals looking for the best path forward among shifting and never-ideal possibilities. Reading this book and sharing their journeys nourishes the soul. I'm a pessimist by nature, but I left this book with a keen, quiet sense of the possibilities of ordinary lives.

If you've been following the debate about American Dirt, I would suggest this book as an alternative. It doesn't document the journey immigrants travel to come to the U.S., but it does paint a valuable portrait of immigrants both recent and long-term.

I received a free electronic review title of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, but I'll be buying a print copy. I want to have it to hold in my hands, to use as a sort of talisman of what is possible within our imperfect lives.

This novel tackles how we care for each other. Antonia, the main character, is a recently retired professor of English originally from the Dominican Republic. Just as she retired, her husband died of a heart attack, which means that her retirement has turned into a time of mourning. Antonia lives and secludes herself in her house in the Vermont (I believe) countryside. She starts getting pulled back into the world when a young undocumented Mexican immigrant who works at the dairy farm next door starts working for her to do some repairs around the house. Antonia, as a Latina immigrant herself, has some understanding of this young man's culture and how he relates to both her and his other employer with the deference that springs from being utterly dependent upon them both for his safety and sanctuary.

Antonia has four sisters and all the sisters squabble with each other, care for each other deeply, and have fallen into expected roles. Antonia herself has been given a church bells ring tone by each of her sisters because she is a rule follower. Antonia has had career success and had let her doctor husband be the "heart" of their marriage while she was the "head", the worrier, the cynic. Her sisters feel that she can be judgmental. When faced with another person's problem, Antonia tends to pull from her vast store of literature and make some sort of quote that, while it applies to the situation at hand, isn't always the useful response that her family needs.

Two things ramp up the plot. First, her young immigrant friend asks to use her phone to call his girlfriend. It turns out that this girl is heading from Mexico to him but they have run afoul of the coyotes who have been transporting her. Second, Antonia's sister goes missing. This sister has shown quite a few signs of being bipolar but the sister also hasn't wanted medication for this issue and so she has become more and more impulsive and her judgement has become more and more impaired. Antonia and her other three sisters end up on a hunt for her across the entire eastern seaboard.

Antonia keeps telling herself that she doesn't want to get involved in any of this- all of these people can take care of their problems themselves. But she's really bad at actually standing her ground in this and despite her best intentions her life becomes more linked to all of these people in need.

The author does a great job of unspooling how people relate to each other through culture and class. This is not a novel about illegal immigration, but that topic is addressed. This isn't a book just about grief, although that's addressed too. It also pulls in perceptions and prejudice, family dynamics. It's a short novel for all of that, and I really enjoyed reading it. This could end up being a great book club book.

2.75 stars

There are so many powerful themes in this book: death, grief, loss, immigration, teen pregnancy, mental illness, and more. Despite the fact that these topics are presented in such a small space - less than 300 pages - they feel wildly disjointed. It's hard to get a sense of place, completion, or development.

I am really interested in Alvarez's attempt at uncovering what happens to a person at this stage of life: retirement and loss of a spouse. But, I feel really worried if this is what lies ahead. The m.c.'s identity becomes so dependent upon the people around her. I found it odd that as she grows older and gains more independence in some critical ways (widowed versus married, retired versus employed), her identity somehow becomes more nebulous instead of increasingly stable.

I have really enjoyed many of Alvarez's works, but this presented an unexpected struggle.

This OK, not great. Interesting writing style that worked much, but not all of the time. The characters aren't likeable much of the time, and this may be more a female read (which I often like), which may be why I didn't click with this. The author has obvious talent so I may have to circle back to some of her other work.

Thanks very much for the ARC for review!!