Afterlife

By: Julia Alvarez

Narrated by: Alma Cuervo

Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

The first adult novel in almost 15 years by the internationally best-selling author of In the Time of the Butterflies and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents.

Antonia Vega, the immigrant writer at the center of Afterlife, has had the rug pulled out from under her. She has just retired from the college where she taught English when her beloved husband, Sam, suddenly dies. And then more jolts: her bighearted but unstable sister disappears, and Antonia returns home one evening to find a pregnant, undocumented teenager on her doorstep. Antonia has always sought direction in the literature she loves - lines from her favorite authors play in her head like a soundtrack - but now she finds that the world demands more of her than words.

Afterlife is a compact, nimble, and sharply droll novel. Set in this political moment of tribalism and distrust, it asks: What do we owe those in crisis in our families, including - maybe especially - members of our human family? How do we live in a broken world without losing faith in one another or ourselves? And how do we stay true to those glorious souls we have lost?

©2020 Julia Alvarez (P)2020 Recorded Books

Realistic, thoughtful, timely

The characters were not offered formulaic answers to their complex human challenges of grieving and loneliness. But they were all encouraged to find energy and desire to love and hope and reach out again

Highly recommended

A beautiful, moving story read with such care and tenderness . Loved the relationships in the sisterhood and will take away the thoughts on the afterlife.

Beautiful

Beautiful story that holds your attention and fills your heart with compassion for migrants. I would recommend this book and the narrator is fabulous!

A Good Listen

I enjoyed this book though I wish more of the Spanish phrases used had been translated.

still thinking about main character

short novella. well written. meaningful story leave you pondering about life
situations, and issues surrounding us

Always so real for me

I love how she speaks from Dominican culture right out of life in the motherland. Even when the action doesn’t happen there she just connects you to her culture ( which is mine too). It’s like living in a Dominican home. I loved the characters, the sisterhood, what a wonderful family she created for this book. Makes me wonder if she had a ton of siblings too. It’s just so real to me. Doesn’t feel like fiction. Loved it.

Good story, awful narrator

The story was good enough to keep my attention, but the narrator was awful. No line breaks, barely any change in pace/tone/etc. It was really hard to listen to. Wish I would have read the hard copy….

This book hooked me completely

I absolutely got hooked in this book early on, totally unexpectedly. I chose it because it had a misleading title, and loved it because it gave me so many feelings. Antonia is newly retired, newly widowed, and newly involved in a situation with a pregnant Mexican teenager. Antonia has 3 sisters and one goes missing. Things are going on big time.

There's a lot going on for one book, and I read a couple of reviews that complain that it is all over the place. That was partly what hooked me - rarely in life do things happen serially. It felt real because it was so much at once.

I had so many feelings about this book, all the way through. I listened to it quickly because I needed to know what would happen next. I had to wait until the next day to start anything new.

The narration was excellent and I highly recommend this book.

A moving, beautiful story

"The best thing you can give the people who love you is to take care of yourself.”

Shortly after Antonia Vega retires from her position as an English teacher at a local college, her beloved husband, Sam dies of a heart attack. Antonia believes that Sam has always been the strong one in their relationship and that he has always been the “good cop” to her “bad cop”. Now, without Sam to rely on, Antonia will have to find a way to go on, to move forward and to carry out his legacy.

The novel offers two parallel stories. One of Antonia and her 3 sisters “the sisterhood”, in crisis over the disappearance of the oldest sister, and one of Antonia’s life at home in Vermont and the young, Mexican immigrants who work for the farmer next door.

Afterlife asks what do we owe to our family, immediate and extended. And what do we owe to others who are trying to live in this broken world. And perhaps, most importantly, what do we owe to the memory of our loved ones and, to ourselves. Addressing issues of grief, immigration and mental illness, Afterlife is a moving story, beautifully written, that you won’t soon forget. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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Who is the most important one?

In Afterlife, Julia Alvarez reveals the slow journey forward for those left behind, those left to grieve and remember and wonder and wish, to balance self care with the care of others and remember to be oneself while never failing to consider what the lost would've wanted to do.

I found the central character's loss of surety throughout her coping with grief and the afterlife very realistic.

A big part of this story is also an exploration of the tragedy of America's border and immigration policy, particularly the separation of children from their parents during the Trump presidency. As the central character moves through her own personal losses and family dramas, they are juxtaposed with the plight of refugees from South of the border, and while the author doesn't necessarily answer the moral questions, she does explore Tolstoy's three questions through the eyes of her narrator. "Who is the most important one?" features prominently as she decides the extent to which she will sacrifice her own comforts of safety to come to the aid of others.

The voice actor was just okay. She reads well but stumbles over some English phrasing/pronunciation and speaks somewhat haltingly in a few places.