"You, who quite truly knew him, can quite truly continue in his spirit and on his path. Make it the task of your mourning to explore what he had expected of you, had hoped for you, had wished to happen to you...his influence has not vanished from your existence..."~from The Dark Interval by Rainer Maria Rilke

Reading about the death of a loved one during the time of Coronavirus is difficult. I feel the cold blade of fear which I daily push back down into my subconscious, then "tie my hat and crease my shawl" to perform my tasks and obligations.

Afterlife is the story of Hispanic retired literature teacher Antonia who mourns the loss of her husband Sam. She struggles to understand how to now live. Her sisters are calling her to join them in confronting their sibling's bipolar illness. An illegal immigrant employed by her Vermont farmer neighbor implores her to help him bring his girl to join him.

All these demands! Antonia just wants to tend her own garden and live with her sorrow. But knowing Sam has changed her. His compassion remains an example of how to live in this world. Sam"seems to be resurrecting inside her," and she wonders, "is this all his afterlife will amount to? Saminspired deeds from the people who love him?"

Antonia's mind is filled with the books she loved and taught, including Rainer Maria Rilke. Last year I had read The Dark Interval which shares Rilke's letters of condolences. Alvarez's novel embodies Rilke's philosophy.

Against her nature and inclination, Sam leads Antonia to risk becoming involved in the lives and problems of other people. "Living your life is a full-time job," a sister justifies. Isn't that the truth? Then, a therapist reads Rilke to the sisters: "Death does not wound us without, at the same time, lifting us toward a more perfect understanding of this being and of ourselves."

Antonia's students always responded to Rilke's poem 'Archaic Torso of Apollo" which ends, "you must change your life." It is a line that has haunted ever me since I first read it. The question Antonia wonders, is how and when do we change it?

It is a question to be asked over and over. There is no end to such a consideration. We read a book and what we learn reminds us that we must change our life. We see a work of art, Rilke his Greek torso, for Antonia the Landscape with The Fall of Icarus, or when hear a symphony, or observe a beautiful spring flower or a deep woods filled with birdsong--

All the world is life-changing if we allow ourselves to truly live and open our senses and hearts and minds. To be alive is life-changing. To die is life-changing.

Antonia accepts the challenge to be Saminspired.

Alvarez is a brilliant writer who has combined a deep reflection on existence with timely questions. There is no better time for this message.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

What a soul-searching story of finding our truest self in a time of anxiety and stress. Beautifully written, it is easy to identify with the main character as she struggles to understand her oldest, possibly mentally ill, sister and has to cope with a pregnant, undocumented 16-year-old immigrant discovered in her garage, all shortly after her husband's death and her own retirement. So many quotes and references to good literature too.

Thanks to NetGalley and Algonquin Books for the ARC to read and review.

This is the first book I've read by Julia Alvarez and I am awed by her writing. It is luminous, insightful and true. With its backdrop of a widow's grief and a storyline involving illegal immigrants, mental illness, and the terrible habit we all have of "othering" those from different backrounds,  Afterlife is a poetic page-turner of a story.
Thought-provoking but never preachy,
Alvarez's story unfolds as naturally and utterly believably as it must, touching the reader's heart and packing a fierce emotional punch.

I received a free copy of Afterlife from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley, Julia Alvarez, and Algonquin Books for the ARC of Afterlife, in return for an honest review.

Antonia Vega, immigrant, writer, retired college professor of English, has a great life. Then, Sam, her wonderful husband, dies, her mentally unstable sister disappears, and she comes home one night to find a pregnant undocumented teenager hiding in her garage. Still recovering from the recent death of her husband, she is challenged to discover just how much love and strength she really has. This is a timely book that will cause any reader with a conscience and a heart, to dig deep into themselves and decide how much courage they have to help others and to regain faith in life and the people around them.

Although written before the covid virus was pronounced a pandemic, Alvarez’s book is timely and truly hits the mark about loneliness, death and a kind of re-emergence. Although I didn’t want to put the book down neither did I want it to end. Afterlife takes the reader down a twisted story that keeps one wanting more.

I love books where you're dropped right into a character's mind. We don't get a ton of background on Antonia Vega when we first meet her (only that she's struggling as a recent widow). Then we're thrust into the action of Antonia's life - including the disappearance of one of her unstable sisters and her discovery of an immigrant pregnant teenager who desperately needs her help. Throughout the entire book, Antonia felt very real to me; her inner dialogue was honest and spirited. The story comes even more alive whenever Antonia's sisters are present - loud, dramatic, and emotional, they spring colorfully from the page.

Although Alvarez's book is pretty filled with action, it's a more quiet desperation that drives the plot. Her style of writing took me a bit of time to get used to; it can seem choppy with incomplete sentences and stream of consciousness-like tangents. But once I came to understand the language, I was taken in by the story. Antonia constantly fights to do right by her sisters, her community, and as a Latina woman in America today.

This might be a more PC choice for people who are turned off by the "American Dirt" controversy but still want to connect to a strong woman of color character.

This book is a superbly satisfying read. It's timely and intriguing. It's emotional and, at times, raw. But here is my favorite part: the protagonist is a 60 year old woman! Filled with hope and sisterhood, Afterlife is an excellent addition to our women's fiction collection.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free digital advanced reading copy in exchange for an honest review.

Amazingly, I've never read Julia Alvarez before. I enjoyed this tale of four sisters from the Dominican Republic (narrated by Antonia, the second oldest)..Antonia's an English teacher and her advice to her sisters (and herself as she processes her grief after her husband's death) is peppered with aphorisms and quotations from writers.

She also deals with an illegal immigrant from Mexico and his pregnant girlfriend. The "sisterhood" is described in vivid detail and all of the characters are alive and interesting. Antonia, the main character, grows over the course of the book. I highly recommend this book.

Though I found myself questioning parts of the book, I will recommend it to students and reading groups since there is a great deal of meat for intelligent discussions.

I am a fan of Alvarez and utilize her YA books extensively in classes.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC.

The novel touches on many important issues-carrying on with life after the death of a spouse,the dynamics in the relationship between four sister siblings, illegal immigration,mental illness,our responsibility to ourselves and to others in dire straits etc etc.
So , I should have liked it, but did not.I thought the writing was very disjointed,and more importantly for me, I could not identify or connect with any of the characters. Frankly, a read that should have been interesting was BORING. I can’t remember the last time I DNF a book, but came very close to doing so on this one.
It just didn’t work for me.

This is a poignant story about a woman's grief and how she heals through the relationships she has with her sisters. It's compelling and thought-provoking read. Julia Alvarez is a wonderful writer who is able to interweave humor into a story that explores issues that pull at our heartstrings.

Afterlife by Julia Alvarez

Can there be anything worse than waiting for a loved one who never arrives? Getting that phone call? An accident. A sudden illness. A stroke? A heart attack? The prologue to "Afterlife," the much anticipated new novel from author, professor, and activist Julia Alvarez acts like a gut punch. Antonia, just retired

from her teaching job at a well-known Vermont college (much like Alvarez herself) is waiting in a favorite restaurant for a celebratory meal with her husband Sam, a meal that will not happen.

Nine months later Antonia is struggling. Her three sisters who are scattered around the country are each responsible for touching base with her on a certain day. Old friends include her in their dinner parties which she finds interminable. Others walk on eggshells when in her presence. All Antonia wants is be alone with her memories but we sense that life won't allow that happen.

Two disparate storylines unfold, the first centers around the so-called sisterhood, the often tense but always close relationship that Antonia has with her siblings. Informed by their Dominican upbringing, these women have strong views on how each other should live their lives and right now they need to stage an intervention with Izzy, the erratic one, who may suffer from bi-polar syndrome. But Antonia has to protect her own fragile well-being, lean into the grieving process, and keep a distance from her family's drama.

Then a very different and more compelling section of the novel arises in the form of Mario, a young Mexican man sent from her well-meaning neighbor to help clear the gutters, a job Sam always handled. Antonia hesitates - is Mario even here legally? Sam, always sitting on her shoulder, would have said go ahead, don't worry, step out of your comfort zone. And so Antonia does, and before long Mario is confiding in her like a mother and somehow Antonia is saying yes, she'll foot the bill for Mario's girlfriend and pay the coyote to bring her to the states and then to Vermont.

Alvarez is disarmingly honest in her writing. She sensitively portrays a woman who, though proud of her Dominican heritage, does not want to be taken advantage of for it. She feels the tug of resentment at feeling suddenly responsible for these other lives, Mario, and now a pregnant Estella, when she isn't even sure where her own life is going. And anger! Oh yes, she's mad at Sam. How could he leave her in this predicament?

There's a lot going on in this relatively short novel. Alvarez has previously examined sibling relationships that resemble her own family, specifically in "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent," and "In the Time of the Butterflies," but in her new book I found the sisters' story jarring when compared to the timely and complicated subject of legal and illegal immigration, anchor babies, and what, if anything, we owe to these new, hardworking young people who arrive on our shores seeking a better life.

The book comes out in April and is receiving glowing praise from all quarters. I admit that I'm still mulling it over weeks after having finished it. I would love to hear from Alvarez fans and those who may be new to her work. "Afterlife" will be a great choice for book groups everywhere when and if we begin meeting again in person. Stay well everyone!

I enjoyed this book about Antonia dealing with the loss of her husband, the stress of her three high maintenance sisters, and the arrival of an undocumented pregnant Mexican girl in her garage. As Antonia finds herself making decisions based on what Sam would say or do, she finds that her husband is able to live on in her life this way. In a way, this reminded me of a coming of age story, but a late in life version of someone finally discovering who she is and what she stands for.

What a story to lose yourself in. I have been meaning to read Julia Alvarez for some time, In the Time of Butterflies, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, etc., but I just kept putting it off for some reason. Afterlife has propelled her works back to the front of the TBR pile. So many emotions and deep reflections were packed into this petite novel, I can only imagine what she does with even more pages.

The best thing about this book is the dynamic between Antonia and her sisters. I so rarely get to read things where a woman in her sixties is the main character, and this book has four of them! Alvarez writes Izzy, Tilly, Mona and Antonia with such life and candor that I can’t imagine that they aren’t based on real people. When I read the description I was drawn in by the mention of “a pregnant, undocumented teenager on her doorstep”, but I absolutely stayed for the interfamilial conflict.

At the heart of this story is grief and loss, relayed with such raw compassion that—yeah, I’ll admit it—I cried a bit. We watch Antonia struggle with loss long after the sympathy wave has dissipated. She pinballs from one crisis to another in order to distract herself from the empty space, both literal and figurative, that now inhabits her life. She’s making decisions and responding to situations differently than she had before, and is left wondering which choices are her own. (I’ve recently discovered one of my most read sub-genres is ‘Death’, so I guess this is right up my own morbid alley)

The question that Antonia, Alvarez and the reader keeps being drawn back to is a philosophical one: what do we owe one another? And also to an extent, what do we owe ourselves? There’s no easy answers provided here. None as binary as ‘nothing!’ or ‘everything!’ The answer lies probably somewhere in the middle, in the excruciatingly non-specific “something”. Yes, we owe each other something. Otherwise, what’s the point of it all?

another bold novel from this author, who writes from her heart. Characters were well developed and the reading was very enjoyable. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher!

I adore Alvarez' middle grade and YA books. I've recommended them countless times in our middle school library. However, this adult novel was difficult for me to stay engaged.

There are two major plot points here: one dealing with the main character's sisters, and one dealing with an undocumented pregnant teenager. I wanted to know more about the relationship with the teenager, but I felt too much was given to the sister relationship. For me, it was two stories in one book and I was only interested in one of them.

This is not to say others will find their "mirrors" and relate well to the story. I just didn't bond with the main character enough.

Antonia has no sooner retired from her academic post than her husband dies suddenly, leaving her grief-stricken and trying to channel her husband's best generous impulses. This becomes a challenge when an immigrant worker from the neighboring farm requests her help with getting his pregnant girlfriend to Vermont. At the same time, one of her three sisters has gone missing, leading to the need for a sister intervention. Antonia attempts to respond to both emergencies, moving between Vermont, the mid-west, and Massachusetts, finding it difficult to be all things to others while keeping her own self intact. The themes of family relationships and the legal issues of immigrants make this novel especially timely and meaningful. And who can forget the image of a sister pulling up with rescue llamas in the back of a truck?

Thank you to Net Galley for an Advanced Reader Copy of Afterlife. It is, in a word, beautiful

In the first pages of Julia Alvarez's new novel, Antonia Vega's life is upended. On the day she retires from her long-time job as an English professor, she learns that her husband has had a heart attack and died on the way to meet her at dinner. The subsequent chapter, about eight months later, finds Antonia still mourning her husband and trying to quietly come to terms with widowhood. Life has other plans for her, however.

Antonia is one of four sisters, "The Sisterhood." Her oldest sister, is bipolar and has gone missing en route to another sister's home in Chicago for Antonia birthday celebration. If that was not enough to deal with, Antonia arrives back home in Vermont to find an undocumented pregnant teenager living in her garage.

Antonia and the reader must go from crisis to crisis. To some, this can make the story disjointed, but for me, it simply felt like life. Life is not neat and tidy, nor is it linear. One doesn't get to deal with grief in a vacuum while all else moves along smoothly. The best plans can be derailed and one has to regroup and move forward.

While no one knows what the afterlife holds for us, Julia Alvarez definitely understands life and living.

I love the way Julia Alvarez uses words; she has such a soulful quality and I have always been drawn into the stories she creates. It was ironic that I was reading this right after I found out that someone I know just lost their husband. This is a beautifully written, heartfelt story about figuring out who you become when the person who helped you be who you were is gone.
Antonia is dealing with trying to figure out who she is and what her place in the world is now when she is confronted with new obstacles. An undocumented teenager, a neighbor who she longs to help, and her sisters/her family.
Once again Alvarez does not disappoint! a beautiful story about grief and how you cope when the world still needs you.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC!

I absolutely loved this book. Her writing is beautiful and I look forward to publication to enjoy her prose. With wit, she explores deftly many issues of our time. I highly recommend it.