(#gifted @librofm @algonquinbooks) Afterlife was such a beautiful musing on grief, loss, and sisterhood which genuinely moved me. Antonia Vega is a 66-year-old immigrant author and recently retired English professor from the Dominican Republic. After losing her husband Sam before the novel begins, Antonia now must face a crisis with her older sister, not to mention the pregnant, undocumented teenager who has arrived on her doorstep, the girlfriend of her neighbour's farmhand.
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Although there's a lot going on in this book, Alvarez has constructed a compact and succinct account. No words are wasted, and you can feel Antonia's love for words through the way she narrates her story. Her occasional tangents into the inner workings of linguistic tendencies, semantics, and turns of phrase had my inner linguistics nerd heart singing! I liked the narrator, Alma Cuervo, as she embodied Antonia's personality well, but she spoke so slowly! I had to speed up the narration to 1.25 haha.
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I think that, although mental illness and immigration are major themes in this novel, it mainly hinges on a reflection on how our deceased loved ones live on in our memories, stories and actions. In their relationship, Sam was always the fierce advocate for various issues (even though their friends always assumed Antonia was the more radical one because of the colour of her skin). But now, after he's gone, Antonia finds herself acting in ways that Sam would have acted. From the afterlife, Sam encourages her to do what is right, not what is easy.
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It was truly brilliant the way Alvarez managed to make Sam, dead before the novel begins, feel as real as any of the living characters in the book. She demonstrates how we keep the dead alive through our actions. I also adored the dynamics between Antonia and her three sisters, all very different and yet loyal to one another to a T.
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These 250 pages (or 6.5 hours of listening time) have so much to offer, this is definitely one I recommend to everyone who enjoys a thoughtful and meditative read!