"All stories are good stories if you find the right listener."

I was in awe of Julia Alvarez and Edwidge Danticat's discussion of The Cemetery of Untold Stories at The Center for Fiction. Hearing about the power of storytelling and the importance of oral histories to preserve culture left me inspired and I couldn't wait to meet the characters that I heard so much about.

Reading this one felt like I was listening in on all the good chisme being discussed at a family gathering. I instantly fell in love with Filomena and her ability to receive all the stories from the ghosts of the cemetery. I also fell in love with her own personal story that has yet to be told to the world. It has been difficult to read lately but this completely captivated my attention and I found it so easy to immerse myself in this world and forget everything heavy I was going through in real life. Filomena and Bienvenida are unforgettable and by the end of the book I just couldn't let them go. I find myself wondering about them.

This is a book that is heavily driven by the characters and the stories they share and there is no real plot, but the vibes and the feelings are perfect. I loved how some of the ghost stories were interconnected and how the use of language, including Dominican Spanish, added even more flavor. It wasn't my favorite of Alvarez's work, but it is one that I will always think of because it feels like a warm hug from the Caribbean. Thanks to @algonquinbooks for the gifted copy.

Some thoughts I'm left with are:
• Who decides the validity of stories and oral histories?
• What happens to stories when authors stop writing?
• Every story has its ideal listener, so they all need to be told.
• How do authors reconcile aging and end of life with the amount of untold stories left in them?
• The best stories come from your own families.
• Dominican history has facets that have been erased and can only be uncovered through the stories of ordinary people.
• Where do stories go to die?
• Caribbean stories are a vital part of literary legacy.
• You can't undo harmful history without uncovering stories from different aspects of an event.
• "There are stories in the silence." ( )

I just finished reading The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez. I can sum up my review in these words, I hoped for more.

The beginning was intriguing, a woman writer who got in a rut after her mother died. Her mother complained about the writer exposing family secrets that should have remained buried. After her mother died she started story after story and re-wrote them but they were never good enough for publication. When she inherited a large parcel of worthless land, she wants to make it into a cemetery for untold stories. The land is cleared and some of them are burned, others were put in a plastic lined grave. She hired a woman to take care of the cemetery.

We learn about the writer's family who are bad characters so when the story shifts to the story of the woman who tends the cemetery, I felt hopeful.

Back history brings us to the story of two women, the elder and younger. The younger had a terrible life, she was not even allowed to kept her first name when her old sister demanded that they trade names.

The history of the two sisters unfolds, I did not like the older sister, you can read and find out why. The younger sister's life becomes pitiful and ultimately disappointing.

I wanted to stop reading after a third of the book but got hopeful when the story turned to the younger sister. I did not like the ending. ( )

4.5⭐️

“She needed a place to bury her unfinished work, a space honoring all those characters who had never had the chance to tell their stories. She wanted to bring them home to their mother tongue and land.”

The daughter of Dominican immigrants, renowned Latin American novelist Alma Cruz, decides to relocate to the Dominican Republic after she retires from academia, much to the surprise of her sisters. Despite her successful career as a writer, she carries the burden of several unfinished and abandoned manuscripts that she has decides to lay to rest in a “cemetery” she builds on a piece of land inherited from her late father. Collaborating with a local artist, Alma plans to burn and inter the remains of her notes and manuscripts with artistically sculpted markers for each of her unfinished works. Visitors would be allowed at the cemetery of untold stories but only if they meet some very specific criteria.

“If a story is never told, where does it go?”

Two of the unfinished manuscripts, both of which had a special place in Alma’s heart, don’t burn and are buried as is – one of which was based on the stories shared by her father, Dr. Manuel Cruz, a Dominican immigrant who fled from the Trujillo regime; and the other inspired by the life of Bienvenida Inocencia Ricardo Martinez Trujillo, second wife of former Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. Alma employs Filomena, a lonely woman who has been visiting the cemetery as a groundskeeper. But Filomena does much more than just tend to the property. Capable of hearing the words floating around the cemetery, she lends a sympathetic ear to the interred characters who share their stories with her – stories that inspire her to reflect on her own life.

As the narrative progresses, we follow all of these characters and the history, people and places that have shaped their lives.

An ode to the power of stories, storytelling and orature, The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez is an exquisitely penned character-driven novel that combines elements of historical fiction, magical realism and family drama. The narrative is presented from multiple perspectives across past and present timelines. As the four separate threads of the story converge and diverge, the narrative explores themes of family and sisterhood, the immigrant experience and how the stories of those who came before us are never truly gone and continue to influence the lives of those they left behind. I loved how the magical realism aspect of this story was executed and appreciated that the author did not resort to melodrama while describing intense emotional moments. Though there are moments where the narrative might come across as disjointed (the narrative does jump timelines a tad abruptly which takes a while to get used to), this does not detract from the overall reading experience. There were a few aspects and storylines that I wished had been developed further, but I was satisfied with how the author chose to bring all of the threads of the story together. With its fascinating premise, complex characters, rich historical context and powerful writing, I found this novel to be a compelling read.

I paired my reading with the audiobook narrated by Alma Cuervo for an engaging immersion reading experience. I should mention, however, that the narration is more in storytelling mode with minimal variations between the character voices. While this itself did not bother me, I feel that given the structure of the novel, it might be difficult to follow the multiple tracks and timelines if one plans to rely solely on the audiobook. I would recommend pairing the book with the audio.

“Seems like everyone who lives has endured some sadness, sometimes buried so deep inside them, even they don’t know it’s there. And if you could hear other people’s stories all the time, what then? Would you understand them better? Would you forgive them?”

Many thanks to Algonquin Books for the digital review copy and RB Media for the ALC via NetGalley. All opinions expressed in this review are my own. ( )

Julia Álavrez never disappoints. Never. Her writing has a gentleness to it that can temporarily make us feel it's not doing much. This is a mistake. Word by word, idea by idea, she takes us to fantastic places. And she doesn't do this with a lot of flash and bang—or at least not the kind of flash and bang that shake the house and put everyone on edge. Instead we readers find ourselves realizing there is so much going on here in this novel that pretends it's not saying much at all.

OK, that's not true of all her work. In the Time of the Butterflies definitely has flash and bang—and hilarity and righteous anger and justice and injustice and so much more. But her more recent work is just as powerful in a way that sneaks up on us. Case in point: The Cemetery of Untold Stories. The premise here (if we assume that in some ways what writers write about is themselves, which, of course, we. are. never. supposed. to. do) is almost self-deprecating. A writer finds herself growing older surrounded by a growing body of unfinished works: stories and novels that she wanted to write, needed to write, but that quietly refused to be written.

So what can this writer do? She can move back to her home country, create a graveyard with room for each unfinished story, and allow the stories to fall into a kind of sleep in which they interact with one another.

Reading The Cemetery of Untold Stories is like looking into one of those multi-paned dressing room mirrors, the kind in which, depending on how we angle the different panes in relation to one another show us multiple images and multiples of multiple images. And just like the images in those mirrors, no matter how complex the story gets, its parts remain alongside one another. We think we're taking baby steps, moving forward in small increments; then, at some point we realize we've been given seven-league boots to wear and are traveling distances we couldn't have imagined from our starting place.

Read this book. Respect its pace, but don't be fooled. The journey is magical.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own. ( )

Alma Cruz, a Dominican novelist and professor nearing retirement, has enjoyed considerable professional success since emigrating from her native land to her current home in Vermont. Like all writers, though, along with the successes, there have been failures in the form of books she cannot seem to finish. These untold stories haunt Alma to the point that when she and her three sisters inherit some rundown properties in the Dominican Republic, she returns home to commit the symbolic act of burying those failed literary efforts in the ground. But the characters in those stories refuse to give up on their tales being told, even if Alma has. Two characters in particular—Bienvenida Trujillo, the second wife of the brutal dictator who terrorized the island for decades, and Manuel Cruz, Alma’s own father who was exiled for his political views—find a way to communicate with each other as well as Filomena, the caretaker in the unique cemetery. While most unfinished books go away quietly—as one of Alma’s colleagues put it: “Some stories don’t want to be told”—these are two that insist on being heard. And what surprising and heartbreaking accounts they end up telling.

In The Cemetery of Untold Stories, celebrated author Julia Alvarez spins this inventive tale, which effectively combines elements of historical fiction and magical realism with a multi-generational family saga in roughly equal measure. That is an impressive feat, especially given how tricky magical realism can be to pull off on its own, much less in concert with other genres. Alvarez does a nice job of moving between the plethora of storylines, starting in the present day with Alma and her family before regressing through the decades where we learn the histories that the spirits of Bienvenida and Manuel have come alive to tell. The writing throughout the novel is sharp and affecting; these are characters that we come to care about, both those in the present (Alma and Filomena) and those from the past. If there was any shortcoming in the book it would be that some of the family dynamics and backstories—usually a strength in the author’s fiction—were a little underdeveloped, particularly those involving Alma’s sisters and mother. Still, this is a minor complaint about what was a highly enjoyable reading experience. It is an easy book to recommend without hesitation. ( )