As my second Julia Alvarez book I am quickly becoming quite the fan! I don't know if it is her style of writing that does not include quotation marks, or a side effect of a pre-publication edition, but my only complaint is the challenge of adjusting to reading with out those cues of speech.
This fantastic multi layered story brings us to the protagonists home land in the Dominican Republic. A renowned author with stories unfinished that haunt her, she decides to use land she inherits to make a cemetery. Not for bodies, but for stories. Each marked with beautiful creations of art, a special ear can still hear the characters and the bits they have to tell. A unique experience for sure is this masterful novel of tales unfinished, but not forgotten.
Thanks to Algonquin Books and Netgalley for this wonderful pre-pub e-book in exchange for an honest review.

4.5✨
cw: child death, murder, miscarriage, infidelity

thank you so much to @netgalley and @algonquinbooks for the early review copy! this comes out April 2nd, 2024

my star ratings are based significantly on the amount of feeling i have while reading the book - this book had me feeeeling and wondering and reflecting. Julia Alvarez is such an incredible writer

this book is about how our stories humanize us, how stories build empathy and connect our sense of humanity together. how the lack of our stories being told leaves us buried beneath the weight of silence, of misunderstanding. the stories of ourselves, of our love, our mistakes, our shame. of our countries, of their love, their mistakes, their shame

“…these were precisely the characters Alma felt drawn to. The silenced ones, their tongues cut off; wives and daughters taking dictation from their husbands or fathers, improving and revising, in fact cowriting the epics, the sonnets, the ballads, with never a credit to their names. Generations of Anons.”

Julia Alvarez can do no wrong! I have loved everything she has written and this is not an exception. I really enjoyed this ghost story told by multiple characters. Highly recommend this book!

Julia Alvarez's "The Cemetery of Untold Stories" was a slow start for me (and almost became a DNF), but I'm glad I stuck with it. The book's magical realism captured my imagination; I especially love the idea of stories being told by those who have passed but haven't finished their work on earth. By the end, the threads that I had a hard time picking up at first were woven together into a satisfying tale of narrative and family, love and loss.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC; all opinions are my own.

I started reading this book on three different occasions but failed to stay interested. It felt more like ramblings instead of a novel or story. I found it very confusing. Thanks to the author, Algonquin Books, and NetGalley for providing an ARC of The Cemetery of Untold Stories for review. The opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.

This was a 3.5 rounded up to 4 stars for me due to the slow start. I have been a fan of Julia Alvarez for ages, and so my expectations might have been slightly higher for this novel. While the beginning felt slow and impersonal, I'm glad I kept on because eventually I felt the level of engagement her books usually involve. In particular, I enjoyed the conversations between the untold stories. It was a unique perspective and Alvarez made it work without it getting awkward or confusing.

The Cemetery of Untold Stories is certainly different which I appreciated. Alma is a well known author who has struggled with finishing stories of some characters for her books. She returns from the US to the Land of her heritage, Dominican Republic, and creates a burial ground for these untold stories. Definitely creative, but at times confusing. And, I felt at a disadvantage not knowing Spanish since the book is peppered with Spanish words and phrases. 3.5 rounded up to 4 stars.

Reading this book is like falling into a fairy tale that is also a love letter to the art of storytelling. The lyrical prose and heady atmosphere draw the reader into a engrossing family story about four Dominican American sisters that inherit property back home after the death of their parents. It reminded me of Nicole Krauss's The History of Love with a dose of island magic.

"Literary icon Julia Alvarez, bestselling author of In the Time of the Butterflies shares an inventive and emotional novel about storytelling and her homeland of the Dominican Republic.

Alma Cruz, the celebrated writer at the heart of The Cemetery of Untold Stories, doesn't want to end up like her friend, a novelist who fought so long and hard to finish a book that it threatened her sanity. So when Alma inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, her homeland, she has the beautiful idea of turning it into a place to bury her untold stories - literally. She creates a graveyard for the manuscript drafts and revisions, and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her.

Alma wants her characters to rest in peace. But they have other ideas, and the cemetery becomes a mysterious sanctuary for their true narratives. Filomena, a local woman hired as the groundskeeper, becomes a sympathetic listener as Alma's characters unspool their secret tales. Among them: Bienvenida, the abandoned second wife of dictator Rafael Trujillo, consigned to oblivion by history, and Manuel Cruz, a doctor who fought in the Dominican underground and escaped to the United States.

The characters defy their author: they talk back to her and talk to one another behind her back, rewriting and revising themselves. The Cemetery of Untold Stories asks: Whose stories get to be told, and whose buried? Finally, Alma finds the meaning she and her characters yearn for in the everlasting vitality of stories.

Readers of Isabel Allende's Violeta and Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead will devour Alvarez's extraordinary new novel about beauty and authenticity, and will be reminded that the stories of our lives are never truly finished, even at the end."

Jasper Fforde meets magical realism.

“The Cemetery of Untold Stories” is by Julia Alvarez. This book is, at it’s core, a book about stories. I think, no - I know - that all of us have stories yearning to be allowed to be told … even the ones that we cannot quite figure out how to tell or if they should be told. The idea and execution of this collection of stories was well done, but at times I struggled reading this book (between the time jumps, the narrator switching, and the plot lines). I think that if I had a better understanding of the Dominican Republic and the Spanish culture, I would have enjoyed this book a lot more. If you're familiar with Ms. Alvarez's previous works, you may enjoy this book a lot more than I did.

This book was both magical realism and literary fiction. It was a bit slow paced but still a good story. Implies the importance of a family sharing stories. I did enjoy this book and would recommend. Thank you to Netgalley for the e-arc of this book.
3 star

When a novel leaves me feeling contented and satisfied, I just want to hold it a while longer. This is that kind of book. When an author researches a story and begins writing, sometimes the story has to be abandoned for various reasons. What happens to those characters? This author has created a fictional cemetery where she buries the manuscripts to help bring closure. Luckily we have magical realism that allows us hear these stories from the characters themselves. But it is more than that. This is a novel about families and relationships, about surviving and healing, and about love and acceptance. Great characters and a wonderful sense of place.

Thanks to NetGalley and Algonquin Books for the ARC to read and review.

What a beautiful homage to writing and storytelling set in the Dominican Republic. Alma , a writer returns to inherited land in the Dominican Republic after her father dies to bury her unfinished stories, the characters and stories she never finished writing. She hires Philomena to be the caretaker for the cemetery of untold stories. The characters of these unfinished novels speak to Philomena and tell their stories. We also learn about Philomena and her sister and nephew Pepito. So much of the beautiful Spanish language embedded in the story, the political history of the Domenican Republic and most of all the stories of the people of the DR. Beautiful and eloquent writing, interesting generational family saga.

If you are a lover of the written word, of stories told around a roaring fire, this book is for you. An exquisitely written, emotionally absorbing tale of stories told and stories untold. All things, living and dead have stories to tell if we only listen. Our stories do not end with death but remain with us always. This book is one that will make an impact on all who read it.

A wonderful, thoughtful novel from Julia Alvarez about memory, time, untold stories, and getting older.

3.75 stars

A mystical journey through some interconnected lives and stories as seen (mostly) through the eyes of Alma Cruz, a famous author whose family is from the Dominican Republic. She moves back, haunted by an author acquaintance's unpublished novel and uses her inherited land to build a cemetery for untold stories.

Her life becomes entwined with that of Filomena, a woman whose mother deserted the family when she was a girl. Filomena is instructed to listen to the different voices in the story graveyard. Neither Alma nor Filomena realize that some of those voices are from people very close to them.

Beautifully written, meandering, touching. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

A well known authors inherits a plot of land in the Dominican Republic and decides to create a new piece of work like nothing they have ever done before. To help her healing process she write about characters from a grave yard to help them find peace. These spirits have other plans.... What a fresh piece of wrok this is! I loved it so much!

This is the kind of novel you give yourself time and space to digest. Julia Alvarez keeps company with Barbara Kingsolver on my bookshelf. I love the ideas of stories - and a cemetery of all the stories that go untold. Stories are powerful both in their content and in their sharing and Julia Alvarez understands that deeply. This beautifully composed tale grabs you and the artistry that shapes the story is one to be remembered.

I thought the writing in this story was very good but the plot itself was a little disjointed. The way in which we flipped through the 4 different stories through me off and I wish we'd further developed the cemetery more.

The Cemetery of Untold Stories reads like a soothing balm to the soul. I have read a few of Julia Alvarez's previous works (How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and In The Time of the Butterflies), so I was familiar with her work and her style. The Cemetery of Untold Stories details the sordid stories of prominent characters through an artist's lens. What happens to our stories as we age, the ones perhaps too powerful to be summed up succinctly into a neat package? Do they still carry the emotional weight or heaviness without our own narrative and meaning? This story examines these powerful stories, unfolding as artist Alma tries to make a home for these powerful stories and memories in her homeland. This is a story of returning home, returning to your roots, and giving space and peace to the stories that make up the fabric of our lives. I highly, highly recommend this title!