The Cemetery of Untold Stories is the story of a successful Dominican American writer nearing the end of her career who wants to avoid the fate of a writer friend who became obsessed with finishing her novel, to her detriment. Alma Cruz is ready to pack up her unfinished novels and retire to a quiet life in Vermont. When she inherits a small piece of land in Santo Domingo, she decides to turn it into a cemetery for her unfinished work, believing the ritual burial of her boxes of manuscripts will placate the story gods and calm her own soul.

The bulk of the novel concerns a local woman, Filomena, who becomes the caretaker of the cemetery, as much as it does Alma. Each unfinished story has its own grave and headstone, designed by Alma’s artist friend Brava. But the stories refuse to rest in peace. The protagonists begin to speak to Filomena, telling her their stories. The narrative alternates between the present and the past as Bienvenida Trujillo, the wife of the Dominican Republic’s former dictator, Rafael Trujillo, and Dr. Manuel Cruz, a dissident who fled to the United States, tell their complicated and riveting life stories.

We learn about Dominican history, the immigrant experience, the sacrifices made for love and family, and why certain stories are never told but should be. I loved watching Alma settle into a quiet life in her working-class neighborhood, her touchy relationship with her three sisters, the way Filomena blossoms under the influence of Alma and the stories she is privileged to be told, and the depiction of the various lives Dominican immigrants and their children ended up living in the U.S. It’s a warm, bittersweet, playful novel with a big cast of characters, lots of drama, lovely prose, and a message that will resonate with passionate readers.

Classic magical realism at its best. A slow pace at first, but then picks up in unexpected ways that hit you over the head (in the best way) with the suddenness.

An aging author buries the stories that she has struggled to tell in a self-made cemetery in the Dominican Republic. A beautiful family tale slowly weaves together through the various living and buried characters, the most impactful and interesting of which are the voices of the author’s deceased father and the discarded ex-wife of a dictator, telling tales that run parallel and sometimes collide.

The story feels at least somewhat autobiographical for Julia Alvarez (the nod to the author in the book getting a medal from the US President only confirms this more), which is touching and self-reflective in a way that those who have read her whole canon or followed her career closely will appreciate. This was my first time reading Alvarez though, so while I thought the writing/structure/story were all beautifully done, I did not feel the full impact that I would have if I was more of a lifelong fan. That being said, I will definitely be picking up her previous novels to get even more of her just truly classically gorgeous, read with a cup of tea under many blankets, storytelling.

Cemetery of Untold Stories follows the efforts of Alma, a retired author who has returned to the Dominican Republic, as she establishes a cemetery for her unfinished manuscripts. She meets new people (Philomena was my favorite) and we get experience their stories. BUT wait there’s more! The cemetery brings her stories to life as the markers (made by her artist friend) begin whispering, some not so whispery, their tales. We learn about heartbreak and joy, and fill in different lines of story as we go.

This is a book I knew would be perfect savored slowly with una cafecita. I ended up receiving the ebook and audiobook so I mixed and matched to my mood.

The audiobook added to the lyrical storytelling and fleshes out the contributions of the Spanish language used through out as well. The ebook felt like visiting a classic story, with the patterning of storytelling melting with the shifting narrative. This is multi-POV and multi-timeline as it shifts from living people to living characters. It felt a little overwhelming shifting back and forth, but the author gives the characters such distinctions you learn them like an old friend. The audio book narrator also lends her character building voices to assist with this literal distinction too.

A beautiful book about the power of stories and the art of storytelling. I love Alvarez's ability to create and center multidimensional women who are more than the stories people tell about them. They're flawed, but not defined by their worst actions. They're main characters and more than a footnote in someone else's story.

I love this concept of a cemetery of untold stories, and the idea of laying them to rest, but also giving them a space to tell their own version of their stories. 10/10 recommend this read!

Alma has carried so many stories in her mind for so long. As she attempts to bury them and move on, Filomena is learning that the stories still want to be heard.

Alma, better known as the famous storyteller/author Sheherazade, does not want to continue writing until her mind breaks down. She wants to retire in her homeland and enjoy some peace at the end of her life. Unsure how to properly deal with her unfinished drafts, she decides to use a piece of inherited property in the Dominican Republic and build herself a small house and a cemetery for the drafts of her untold stories. A local woman, Filomena, proves to be her best option for a helper and groundskeeper. Since Filomena appreciates this great job that she needed after her own family dramas, she doesn’t tell Alma when the stories buried in their graves begin talking to her, too.

The two most active stories sharing themselves are Bienvenida, the dictator’s abandoned wife, and Manuel Cruz, a U.S. immigrant trying to rebuild his life in his new home. Filomena also shares her own complicated story with readers. The story lines were all engaging and revealing of the people they involved. The writing was beautiful and the characters’ voices were distinct and told even more by what they shared and what they left untold.

The book quickly felt like an old friend and was a welcome escape to so many different worlds and circumstances. The concept was unique and the book earned 4 out of 5 stars. It was not a straight plot or story and would be most enjoyed by those who appreciate literary fiction or reading a story for its own sake, not just to find resolution to the ideas and conflicts of the characters.

Julia Alvarez is described as a masterful storyteller and I can definitely see why. The cemetery is not for bodies, but for unfinished stories. To gain entrance you have to tell a compelling story.

Alma Cruz inherits some land in her homeland, the Dominican Republic. After watching her friend lose her sanity over an unfinished book, Alma decides to use the land as a place to bury her untold stories. The cemetery becomes a mysterious sanctuary for the true narratives of her half written stories.

The synopsis sounded fascinating and I wasn’t exactly sure how the author was going to set it all up and pull it off. This book is a bit of historical fiction and a bit of magical realism. There are multiple points of view and multiple timelines that overlap a bit here and there. It sounds chaotic but it was a joy to read.

When Alma’s good friend, also a writer, becomes untethered from a book she was never able to finish, Alma decides to put her own unfinished works to rest. Two of the stories don’t want to be burned like the others and submit to burying. There voices still rise telling their stories to the caretaker, Filomena, who learns their secrets and the stories they could never tell Alma in Julia Alvarez’ magical The Cemetery of Untold Stories.

I’ve taken to savoring some ARCs lately. Good and bad. The good is obviously the savoring part; the bad is the moment when you realized that you’ve savored too long and your review is expected the next day. Oops.

What was there to savor about The Cemetery of Untold Stories? A great deal from the beautiful words, the story within a story, to the realizations made with mistakes and how they transform thoughtful people.

The stories that don’t want to be buried belong to Manuel, Alma’s father, and Bienvenida, the ex-wife to the dictator known as El Jefe, Rafael Trujillo who ruled the Dominican Republic for 31 years with a regime of terror. Manuel’s story intertwines with Bienvenida’s when he was an exiled doctor, fearing for his life at the hands of the Trujillo regime. As ex-pats they became friends, although Manuel was always very careful when he learned who Bienvenida had once been married to. Because his story contains a secret he was unwilling to divulge to his daughters, it remained untold until it comes alive, if you will, in the cemetery of untold stories that Alma has created. Filomena is the perfect receptacle for these stories. She honors, protects, and remains loyal.

Bienvenida’s story is one of heartbreak mixed with survival and self-reflection. How does a decent woman, an innocent, kind one, marry a cruel man. When she states: “I was a ghost before my time,” the words resonate. Did she turn a blind eye or not understand or something else altogether?

Besides untold stories, The Cemetery of Untold Stories speaks also of art. Spoken, sung, written, created physically. “My work, your work, Querida, it’s all of a piece,” Brava, who creates the sculptures, says to writer Alma. The voices that stir a writer’s work also compel the artist to create. Art conceptualizes a universe. A universe where all is intertwined, like the characters in this story.

I highly recommend The Cemetery of Untold Stories to anyone who enjoys savoring a beautiful novel.

Many thanks to Algonquin Books for sending me a copy.

At first, I thought that Julia Alvarez’s recent book, The Cemetery of Untold Stories was going to be a collection of short stories and while that isn’t quite how it’s formatted, it is a collection of stories after a fashion. The ways that the different stories weave into and through one another, interacting and overlapping without ever completely merging is mesmerizing. Exploring family relationships – particularly those between siblings as well as the ways that children can never truly, fully know their parents – adds to the sense of existing in proximity and just missing one another. Finally, a dash of exploring the history of the Dominican Republic through the eyes of someone swept up and along by a notorious force shaping that history, and The Cemetery of Untold Stories becomes a compelling and steady read.

As Alma, a novelist, ages and loses her parents, she begins to realize that there are some works she will never be able to finish. Stories she’s started and stopped, revised and restarted many times over but which never seem to feel right. After her father’s death, she surprises and horrifies her sisters by deciding to move back to their parents’ native Dominican Republic where they spent a great deal of time in their youth. Once there, she befriends an artist who is enraptured by Alma’s idea of a cemetery where she can bury the remains of her unfinished stories – the ashes of most and the actual, physical pages of others. The artist will create sculptures to serve as grave markers and it will eventually be open to anyone willing to pay admission – one story of their own. That is how Alma first meets and later hires Filomena. When she is prompted to tell a story, Filomena shares pieces of the story of her life, particularly how she came to fall out with her older sister. Filomena serves as the caretaker of Alma’s cemetery, keeping it clean and listening to the voices of those untold stories as they at last yield up their secrets with surprising connections to one another and to both Alma and Filomena.

Given the pressure to finish what we start (because you can’t succeed if you don’t finish a project in the first place), I found the concept of a resting place for unfinished work a breath of fresh air. The fact of the matter is, there are so many things that we start but don’t finish – often for valid reasons. Associating something unfinished with failure is unfair in so many ways and Alvarez’s approach in this novel resonated on so many levels. Sometimes we just have to accept that something we want to do isn’t working and stepping away is the only real option. There is a grief inherent to letting go in that way, but it can also be the best choice. Sometimes the story can’t be told until it finds the right audience and trying to force it simply can’t do the story or its characters justice.

It’s not surprising that family is entwined in so many of the stories in Alma’s cemetery. In families, it sometimes isn’t that the stories go untold as much as they fall on unwilling or unsympathetic ears and the teller stops trying to tell it. If a story is told in the forest and there’s no one around or willing to hear it spoken, is it truly untold? Looking at Filomena’s falling out with her sister, Perla’s rejection of Filomena’s tale has rendered it essentially untold… until Filomena tells it to someone who is willing to listen (and until Perla is ready to accept what that story meant for her marriage decades later). Stories also play a significant (and often overlooked) role in building and holding a family together. Stories set each member of a family up with their specific role and holding them to it, even as time passes and dynamics may shift, the narrative about them has been established and it can be easier to go along with the story rather than challenge it and threaten the stability of the family as a whole. Of course, those shifts are unavoidable and sometimes the choice must be made to rewrite parts of the story or watch the whole thing crumble.

I was instantly drawn in by the synopsis of this one where the main character who is an author 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. She envisions peace but the manuscripts have other ideas, and the cemetery becomes a mysterious sanctuary for their true narratives.

I really enjoyed a lot of the aspects of this one, starting with the concept. I definitely couldn’t help but wonder if Alvarez thought this way about her stories that never reached their full potential. Once the story got going, the cast was pretty big, with some stories and characters interwoven. I really think it was written to reward the readers for taking their time to read it. While some switches in POVs seemed abrupt, as an ode to storytelling and fictional characters, it'll be appreciated by many.

I enjoyed this magical (realism) read. I read and listened to the audiobook.

Alvarez beautifully captures the culture and personalities of her characters. She skillfully showed many sides to the stories they told and weaved them together masterfully,

This wasn’t a five star read for me because at times I got lost in the stories…there were many points of view and it was difficult to keep them all straight.

This was such a beautiful book and I'll treasure the stories forever. I read this and listened to it on audio simultaneously. The characters were lovable despite their flaws and I treasured the passion, strength, and power the women in particular had.

Thank you Algonquin Books for allowing me to read and review The Cemetery of Untold Stories on NetGalley.

Published: 04/02/24

Stars: 3

Not written for me.

The synopsis lured me in. Since asking to read The Cemetery of Untold Stories I have reevaluated and learned Literary Fiction is a sketchy genre for me. The key words in the blurbs are magical realism and folklore. Moving forward I am passing on books with these descriptors.

Presently, The Cemetery of Untold Stories confused me. I felt as if I was always behind. There are paragraphs that are beautifully written and there connection to the book were lost on me.

I think there is a story here, and written for someone with a more creative wavelength than I have. I would gift this to a thinker. This is not for everyone.

This title alone would make me pick up this book. I love a good title and a simple cover!

This beautifully woven book revolves around characters with roots in the Dominican Republic. Steeped in history, family- both born into and found, and the power of our stories, this book had a bit of a slow start- but then had me captivated.

A once renowned author packs up the pieces of her unfinished and unwritten stories and moves from the US back to the DR to bury them in her newly created “cemetery”. The characters from these stories can not be silent. They begin to tell the groundskeeper their stories, and the POV shifts from the writer, to the groundskeeper, to the characters in the unwritten stories. Each piece moving the reader closer to unraveling their connections. There are Dominican sayings throughout that I didn’t always understand, but understood their importance in the bigger story. An ode to identity in culture, beliefs, traditions and heritage.

With the recent passing of my mom, this book had me yearning to hear all her untold stories. Stories that are now lost. But some may be better left uncovered. We all choose which stories we are willing to share, and which we hold.

I really liked this book and loved how deftly the author interwove the stories. Definitely recommend.

“Seems like everyone who lives has endured some sadness, sometimes buried so deep inside them, even they don’t know it’s there.”

3.5 stars, rounded down to 3. Recommend. I enjoyed this story and how it interweaved various characters and timelines. I hadn't read Alvarez before, but knowing what I know about her previous books, the character who creates the eponymous cemetery could maybe be considered a partial stand-in for her. In any event, I look forward to finally getting around to reading Alvarez's classic works.

Many thanks to NetGalley and to the publisher for a digital ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinions.

One of my favorite books is “In the Time of the Butterflies”, but I’ve strangely haven’t read any other books from Julia. I enjoyed her current book sufficiently to want to explore her other books. The beginning of the book grabbed my attention, but I was sad to find the friend mentioned in the beginning is not mentioned again in the book. This story is about Alma, a famous writer who inherits a plot of land in the countryside of DR and decides to turn it into a place to bury her untold stories. Her stories and the characters within them don’t want to be silenced and want their story to be heard. They find a sympathetic listener in Filomena, a woman who is hired as a groundskeeper. Filomena has spent years not talking and has an interesting life story herself. This story taught me that everyone has a story in them deserving to be told.

I received an ARC from Netgalley for this book and I’m voluntarily providing this review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Algonquin Books for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoy the concept of this book, and I was excited to read it. However, I did not feel that the book captured my attention for more like 30% of the book. The majority of the book I just felt disinterested and did not know where anything was going.

Getting Filomena, Perla, and Manuel’s POVs were the best parts because I loved finding out their connections to each other and Alma + her sisters. After that, I became disinterested again.

CW: grief, minor/adult relationship, confinement, blood, death, child death, violence

The Cemetery of Untold Stories, by Julia Alvarez, falls within one of my favorite genres: magical realism. I loved the concept of a cemetery that doesn’t hold bodies, but rather contains all of the stories that people carry inside them that they’ve never told anyone before. To gain entry, a person stands in front of a speakerphone and tells whichever story they’ve been holding onto. Statues within the cemetery also speak to the caretaker of the space in a wonderful fantastical twist.

I loved Alvarez’s ability to interweave the magical elements within her story. But there were several aspects of this novel that affected my enjoyment level. I did feel like there were too many POVs, especially once the cemetery opens and the statues start talking. It was hard for me to keep everyone straight. I also had a hard time keeping the setting accurate in my mind. For some reason, I kept thinking that a lot of the action was taking place many, many years ago, despite the story actually taking place either within the last century or in current times.

Also, there was a lot of Spanish included in the book. Most of the time I love when other languages are sprinkled throughout a novel because it adds an authenticity that’s really effective. However, with this book, I kept having to pause to look up Spanish words because I wasn’t sure of their context within the sentences. It kept drawing me away from the story, instead of connecting me further to the characters.

There was also a scene of pretty graphic violence that occurred about halfway through the book that left me a little stunned. It seemed like the book’s vibe was a bit humorous at the beginning, so this tonal shift was difficult for me to process. It also involved a child, which was extremely tough to read.

I do love Alvarez’s way of constructing her characters, and her flow of writing is really beautiful. But the story felt fractured in some parts. I think I would have liked it better if the plot just focused on one or two main characters instead of the many that were included. This is the second book I’ve read by Alvarez, but I’m starting to think her books might not be for me.

Julia Alvarez's gorgeous prose bring richness to the entangled lives of those who pass through the titular Cemetery of Untold Stories. The stories, novels left unfinished by one of the narrators, Alma, are buried, but they seep out of the ground in search of someone to listen.

Alvarez's magical realism is perfect for this story-about-stories set in the Dominican Republic. I've seen others gripe about the inclusion of Spanish, but I find the complaint silly. If the phrases (which are really quite brief) are necessary to understanding the narrative, there is a translation or something similar provided, but it's pretty clear in context what they mean even if a translation isn't obvious.

Thanks to NetGalley and the Publisher for the ARC.

"The Cemetery of Untold Stories" is a book about storytelling, where Alma Cruz literally buries her untold stories in a plot of land she inherits in the Dominican Republic. Her stories will not rest peacefully, but rather gossip together, conspiring, rewriting and revising themselves. It is a delightful read if you enjoy magical realism and gorgeous prose. The prose itself is written as one would listen to stories being told and twisted. I would recommend this to fans of Julia Alvarez, and those who love books written as confessions. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.
#TheCemeteryOfUntoldStories

In Julia Alvarez’s Cemetery of Untold Stories, Alma, an author and professor, decides to retire from writing. She returns to the Dominican Republic, where her father has left her some property, and literally buries her unfinished works.

To gain entry to the cemetery, you first must tell a story. And this is how Filomena becomes part the cemetery’s caretaker. As she cleans and sits with the graves, the stories come alive and intertwine with each other as well as Filomena and Alma’s pasts.

Alvarez weaves together magic, history, memory, and family trauma and secrets. It’s a beautiful story that can be funny but also heart breaking and I loved all the connections between “real” and “fictional,” past and present.

I received an ARC copy of this book from Algonquin Books in exchange for my honest review.