Afterlife is the latest novel by author Julia Alvarez, a favorite writer of mine for many years. This is a beautiful book about not only loss, but loyalty and love and friendship and family. Most importantly, this is a story of how we can come to grips with loss and all of its consequences in one's life, and manage to go on. The Prologue in this unforgettable novel is one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking pieces of prose/poetry that I have read, as Antonia repeatedly asks, "Can you please help me find him?" We witness the fragmentation of Antonia's life as she comes undone as she desperately tries to put all of the pieces together once more. Julia Alvarez left the Dominican Republic for the United States in 1960 at the age of ten. She is the author of six novels, three books of nonfiction, three collections of poetry, and eleven books for children and young adults. She has taught and mentored writers in schools and communities across America and, until her retirement in 2016, was a writer-in-residence at Middlebury College. Her work has garnered wide recognition, including a Latina Leader Award in Literature from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, the Hispanic Heritage Award in Literature, the Woman of the Year by Latina magazine, and inclusion in the New York Public Library’s program “The Hand of the Poet: Original Manuscripts by 100 Masters, from John Donne to Julia Alvarez.” In the Time of the Butterflies, with over one million copies in print, was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for its national Big Read program, and in 2013 President Obama awarded Alvarez the National Medal of Arts in recognition of her extraordinary storytelling.

I came to the realization that Hudson didn't know the meaning of a lot of words she was using. "Complicated" was one. "Racist" was another. I hate to break it to you, but "Homo" refers to being gay...Being gay has nothing to do with your skin colour. Since when did royal mean attractive? Don't know if you've looked at the English royals lately...but they're butt ugly. For example, a biologist explains how the brain might release endorphins and create vivid hallucinations at the end of life, while philosophy focuses more on the symbolic. There's no development for Mr. Dominic Draven. The only thing you get an understanding of him is that he is an overbearing, presumptuous, controlling, stalking, asshole. Wow, how attractive. He also had a thing for talking in a bunch of random languages as if that was meant to impress you. Let's think about this for a second: If a friend thinks you are in danger, they keep you in the dark while trying to warn you. I don't know what kind of "friends" Hudson keeps, but that is not how a friend would behave. So the book starts out new girl in a new town, becoming friends with the locals, and then her first glimpse of the mysterious Dravens, catching the eye of the Dravens, and getting an invite up to the VIP area of the club they own and where they dwell night after night but for a limited time only. This happens much to the disbelief of the locals because “gasp” no one has ever managed to break into the inner circle before. Sound familiar? It reminded me of Twilight which is not a favorite of mine. It even has a similar first sighting when they all walk in to the club together but instead of gossipy teenagers pretending not to pay attention, it was tipsy college kids straining to have a look at them or to be noticed by them. They even have their own table in the cafeteria, oops I mean club. After the initial twilight similarities died it did seem to take its own different turn and I do try to make it past the introductory chapters before I give up on a book. I try to give it a fair shot.

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And if that were not adding enough stress to her life, she also has to juggle a get-together with her three sisters to celebrate her birthday, which adds some laughs, but along with that is even more stress.

That certainly describes the protagonist of her new novel, “Afterlife.” Antonia Vega is, like her creator, an immigrant to the United States from the Dominican Republic and, also like Alvarez, a retired professor of literature. “Antonia is trying not to be trapped, trying not to have to choose to go down into a certain bunker of ethnicity and identity,” says Alvarez. “She’s aware of the diversity within herself and the complicated feelings that people around her have about it, even people she chooses to admire.”

Book Summary

The author tells us many thought-provoking issues starting from how to gather the pieces of your life after you lost your loved one, dynamics between sisterhood, their complex relationships, learning to put your needs first but also listening to people’s needs and extending your helpful hands, real and heartbreaking issues about undocumented immigrants, how to connect with the people who suffer from mental illness. While reading countless books on immigration over the years and hoping that the protagonists do well in their new country, I often wonder how living a life as Americans affects their culture. In Afterlife, Julia Alvarez provides me with a poignant answer. After a lifetime of teaching and writing fiction and poetry, Julia Alvarez is still the same humorous, Dominican writer of strung out run on sentences who is not afraid to be blunt to her fictional sisters and to her readers. I did not laugh as I did during Garcia Girls and Yo! because Alvarez has reached a new stage of life and is now a padrina who can dispense a lifetime of knowledge to younger generations. I thought at times that this new chapter to the Garcia Girls’ story felt forced as though Alvarez felt obligated after all these years to continue where she left off. I know in the twilight of her life where Antonia/Yolanda/Julia is emotionally and politically. Not original, Afterlife is a fitting swan song to a career as an immigration- centric writer. I hope that Alvarez still has some funny stories left to tell, but if she does not, Afterlife was worth the wait. I Have just read a 500 something bloody book in a day!!!! i have cooked with said book in my hand changed my kids nappy and ironed Antonia’s neighbor, Roger, employs immigrants to work on his farm, one of whom reaches out to Antonia for help with coordinating his girlfriend’s arrival from Mexico. Estela shows up, pregnant, and is turned away by her boyfriend, Mario, unhappy to see she is having a baby, which cannot be his.