Alma Cruz has enjoyed a successful literary career in the
U.S., but now she has inherited a piece of land in her homeland—the Dominican
Republic. She returns there with plans
to create a cemetery for all of her unfinished stories, and she literally
buries the manuscripts. However, these
stories, particularly the ones about her father and about Bienvenida Trujillo,
refuse to be silent. Alma hires a
neighbor woman, Filomena, as caretaker and as a listener for the buried
stories, which are narrated in this novel alongside those of Alma and Filomena. I guess this is OK as far as magical realism
goes, but it didn’t quite work for me. Bienvenida
Trujillo was the ex-wife of the murderous Dominican dictator, and apparently
there is scant info about her life after the marriage ended. Alvarez paints a complete but obviously
somewhat fictional portrait of her that is one of the highlights of the novel,
possibly second only to Filomena’s backstory.
Also, there’s a possible link between Filomena and one of the storytellers,
but we never find out for sure. That
connection was the nugget that held my attention through the latter part of the
book, but the author just left me hanging.
Afterlife
is still my favorite Alvarez novel, by far.
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