Antonia Vega: recently and painfully widowed, recently retired Professor of English, of Dominican descent, the second of four sisters with wildly divergent but equally strong personalities. While trying to focus on her Afterlife — “No longer a teacher at the college, no longer volunteering and serving on a half dozen boards, no longer in the thick of the writing whirl — she has withdrawn from every narrative, including the ones she makes up for sale. Who am I? the plaintive cry.” — she is reluctantly drawn into the here and now.

Her eldest sister is behaving erratically and is now missing; a pregnant, illegal, Mexican teenager has shown up at her doorstep and needs help; the local Vermont dairy industry is dependent on illegal labor but with ICE encroaching, her translation and leadership skills are in demand. People keep expecting her to rise to the occasions, and she really doesn’t want to.

The writing is absolutely beautiful, the focus internal. The book doesn’t follow a typical narrative arc — while all of the plot lines progress, the real story is Antonia — how she copes and how she struggles with decisions: what is the right thing to do? who is most important? how does she feel about the decisions she is forced to make? I love that Antonia herself defies stereotype, and in fact, spends a great deal of time considering her own stereotypes — both positive and negative — of herself and those around her. Examples:

“Embodied in a man who could so easily fall into the stereotype where Antonia and friends often banish the Jesus folks, the political right-wingers, the gunslingers and xenophobes. Her own othering of others. Whatever is driving him, Sheriff Boyer’s not going to turn off the tide of meanness sweeping over the country, but at least he’s saved a handful of “her” people from being carried away.”

“Just because she’s Latina doesn’t automatically confer on her the personality or inclinations of a Mother Teresa. It irritates her, this moral profiling based on her ethnicity.”

Her characters have depth and variability and she explores their personalities in different contexts. How much personality is expressed or subdued depending on your circumstance? How is behavior judged externally based on cultural norms for the time and place? Fascinating and very well done.

The writing is wonderful — I feel like I underlined something in every paragraph but here are a few good ones in addition to those above:

“Like opera, farm art is an acquired taste. There she goes again, shoving someone down her othering chute.”

“In their small town, it seems everyone wants to tell Antonia their Sam story. A testament to how much he was respected and loved. These narratives are a kind of offering — to what god Antonia cannot guess. All she knows is that for the moment she is its reluctant priestess.”

“Her sisters are doing what they always do when they depart a scene, parsing the meat off its bones, analyzing, judging, exclaiming over the different personalities, a kind of sisterhood digestive system.”

“Does suffering hurt less if you’re poor? she asked the room full of young students. Only the silent dark looks of her two minority students signaled to Professor Vega that they got what she was talking about.”

“Call her what you want, Mario says, a snarky insolence in his voice Antonia has never heard before. It grants her a rare glimpse of who the young man might be in a world where he could be the macho, wielding power.”

“Into the vacuum of her considerations he would step with his big, clunky certainties.”

I requested this book because we are starting a promotion for Afterlife with Algonquin marketing, and thus useful for me to know the story outline (which I enjoyed very much). The book is being offered to members to review at the moment, so reviews will be posting over the next month at https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/index.cfm/ezine_preview_number/14764 - and will also be sent to Debra Linn on a weekly basis.

I really enjoyed this novel. It's a story filled with love; love for our partner, siblings, family,acquaintances even strangers. It examines the interconnections we have with each other and how we navigate ourselves in this crazy world. This story reads like a smooth whiskey on a rainy night.

Afterlife by Julia Alvarez is a wonderful piece of literary fiction. This is the first book I have read by Ms. Alvarez, but as I enjoyed this so much, I am going to be sure to read more.

This book brings into play a lot of family and social dynamics: sisters/relationships with siblings, family death, death of a spouse and soulmate, mental illness, and balancing one’s needs while also addressing other’s needs.

This book also addresses a lot of emotional issues as well: love, loss, and acceptance in the abrupt passing of Antonia’s husband Sam, hope and belief that a life can be better lived that takes shape from the situation of undocumented immigrants that is placed on Antonia during the course of the novel, love and fear and frustration and compassion in regards to Antonia and her sisters in the situation with Izzy’s mental issues and temporary disappearance. And finally: optimism, acceptance, and perseverance in the ability for Antonia to overcome the all-encompassing loss and change to her life from losing Sam and creating a new existence to the years she has hereafter. I love that she is creating a way to keep Sam “alive” and with her by always considering what he would have done if he were still alive, and in that keeping a part of him always with her in her path forward. That is a lot to say in such a small story, but the author was able to weave all of this together in a beautiful tale full of characters, imagery, and fabulous text and quotes.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

5/5 stars

Thank you NetGalley and Algonquin Books for this ARC and in return I am submitting my unbiased and voluntary review and opinion.

I am posting this review to my GR and Bookbub accounts immediately and will post it to my Amazon and B&N accounts upon publication.



There

I have enjoyed reading Julia Alvarez’s books and this one also. The dynamics of four grown sisters and circumstances of the death of a beloved husband. Of course there was some darkness stemming from one sister’s mental illness, the death, and more. The hope in my opinion came from the young immigrant couple and how they could possibly make their life work.. I wanted to hear more of them and their contemporaries.

Regardless of one’s religious beliefs, we are all familiar with the effect of a loved one’s impact well after death. We can not avoid thinking, “What would X do”. After a while, we learn that such a reaction is a generally healthy one. “Afterlife” by Julia Alvarez reminds us that this is so in a powerful manner.

However, that is only one of the main threads weaving through this compelling novel. The other is immigration and how it has manifested itself especially over the most recent generations. Americans have always struggled with immigration, forced and otherwise. In a few recent iterations, Hispanic immigration especially was treated with a bit of a “look the other way” approach. As we all know, that time is clearly over. Immigration in all its phases is now fraught with danger and fear. Our surveillance state seems to know no limits.

Alvarez writes movingly about how even recent immigrants who have worked to assimilate into the so-called American melting pot still struggle to do what’s right. Each situation is unique. Every day brings opportunity for new decisions. Doing nothing becomes a decision as well.

Occasionally there are heroes that appear from the least likely of places. Sometimes there is tragedy that may or may not have been avoided. Ms. Alvarez has written a strong story with multiple layers. Her characters are fully believable;, each situation is totally plausible. The novel is cinematic in nature. Beautifully done.

Thanks to Algonquin and NetGalley for the eARC.