The Brooklyn Rail

Julia Alvarez’s recent novel is a well-wrought exploration of life, love, and what might happen to all those stories that remain untold at the end of a writer’s career. The protagonist Alma Cruz is a successful Dominican-American writer and academic. At the outset of the novel, Alma (who writes under the pen name Scheherazade), has decided to retire to the Dominican Republic. Her father has left her and her three sisters individual pieces of land in their home country. Alma opts for the largest piece—located near a landfill in a poor area. Although her three sisters argue with her about what they see as a ridiculously unsafe plan, Alma resolves to use the land to build a cemetery for her unpublished work and a small home where she can live out her days in hoped-for peace.

While the idea of a place to bury unfinished stories may seem strange, the creation of the cemetery is not simply a metaphor but creates a physical change to the neighborhood, providing her neighbors with hope (for jobs, for interesting gossip, for change), and also serves to bring Alma into closer contact with her past. Alma creates the cemetery seemingly with the hope that burying her unfinished work will somehow silence the stories and their characters, but of course that’s not how things turn out. Some voices cannot be silenced so easily—nor should they be. As we move through the novel, we learn some of these stories, told by those who lived them.

As part of the project, Alma collaborates with a longtime friend, a renowned local artist, Brava, who creates fascinating sculptures for every grave site. Brava seems to vibrate with energy on the page in contrast to Alma’s quieter presence and this juxtaposition is but one example of Alvarez’s enormous skill at characterization. As the cemetery takes shape, Alma sets up a small entry box on the cemetery gate where entry is only allowed to those who tell a story—and not just gossip or an anecdote but a “real” story. The first to try is a local woman and neighbor, Filomena (Filo), who Alma soon hires as a caretaker.

Soon we are drawn into Filo’s own story. Growing up in abject poverty in el campo (which translates roughly to the countryside), Filomena and her sister raise one another Their father is a brutal, abusive drunk who claims their mother (Altagracia/Tatica) has abandoned them, although Filo has a memory of her mother visiting late one night and promising to come back for them. Filo’s sister Perla becomes involved with a charming rich boy from the city, Tesoro, who brings them both gifts and makes promises he doesn’t plan to keep. When Perla becomes pregnant, he promises to take care of her and eventually, he takes the two girls to his parents home where Filo becomes a housemaid. Tesoro’s father forces him to marry Perla and the two move to the States together, leaving behind their infant son (Pepito) and Filo who becomes attached to her young nephew. Soon, though Pepito, is sent to the States and Filo is left alone and heartbroken, with Tesoro’s family where she stays in service for many years.

Eventually Alma decides to burn instead of bury her manuscripts, with the exception of two stories: her father’s, dissident and family man Dr. Manuel Cruz, and a novel focused on Bienvenida Inocencia Ricardo Martinez Trujillo—former wife of the notorious Dominican dictator Rafael “El Jefe” Trujillo. Alma buries these two unfinished works in separate graves—Manuel’s marked by a large snow globe sculpture and Bienvenida’s with a bust of her head. Soon we learn that Filo can hear the voices of the many unfinished stories in the cemetery and through her, the novel shifts to the separate narratives of Manuel and Bienvenida

As with many of the characters in the novel, there is a connection between Dr. Manuel Cruz and Bienvenida Trujillo, just as there is between Manuel and Filo, and Pepito and Alma. Every story is more of a circle than a linear narrative; as the circles overlap, we learn that not only does the difficult history of the island and its people make for compelling reading, but also informs the present in essential ways. As Filo muses at one point, “Everyone who lives has endured some sadness, sometimes buried so deep inside them, even they don’t know it’s there. And if you could hear other people’s stories all the time, what then? Would you understand them better? Would you forgive them?”

As years pass and the complicated stories of Filo and Perla, Manuel and Bienvenida, and Pepito and Alma play out, paths to the future of Alma’s stories and her cemetery are drawn, and a mystery at the center of the novel is, perhaps, solved. Toward the end of the novel, Pepito finds a note from Alma, “Everything on earth stops me and whispers to me, and what they tell me is their story.” And she is exhausted by the flood. However, most stories must come to some type of end and this one ends with a classic children’s book phrase: "Colorín, Colorado, este cuento se ha acabado.” Which translates roughly to “and that’s the end of the story.”

This is a complex and deeply engrossing work and one of Alvarez’s best.