Annotate With Sara

So much happens when Alma Cruz decides to retire from teaching and writing.

The central character in this (multiple POV) novel looks to retire as she approaches 70. Her first order of retirement business is doing something with her unfinished work. Since she doesn’t want to write anymore, she builds a whimsical cemetery. Boxes and boxes of her unfinished manuscripts end up cremated or buried.

The thing is, her work doesn’t rest in peace!

Alma’s unfinished characters don’t go quietly into that good night. They talk. They tell more stories. The cemetery is their space. They are spiritually alive, thriving on a plane of existence no one knew existed until they were buried.

More Than Magical Realism

For sure, we will all hear about the magical realism in The Cemetery of Untold Stories when this book is described and promoted. But I hope the book’s elements of autofiction and metafiction get lots of limelight too. These elements felt more defining.

The writing is so self-aware and delightfully cheeky at times with its use of wordplay and idioms. Sometimes, Alvarez even toes the line of satire (but never quite crosses it). Her characterization and diction are so precise, they could thread needles. Short, simple sentences burst with detail and point to such incredibly specific things in human nature that you just have to stop reading and marvel: How could Alvarez possibly capture that idea in just a few words?

Wonderfully Complex

The novel is deeply layered. There’s multiple points of view, settings, family histories, and timelines. The book abounds with literary allusions, resulting in a whole commentary on storytelling. Alvarez has placed eons of stories and storytelling traditions inside these pages, putting them all in conversation with each other,

My favorite literary motif was the Greek myth of Daphne and Apollo, conjured most often by untimely birdsong in a laurel tree.

The novel also explores the uncanniness (the seriousness, and the tragicness) of 6° of separation in all of the characters’ lives. 

The Hard Stuff: Interpersonal and State Violence

The cemetery is a pretty peaceful space. Outside its gates, the scariest most haunting stuff in the novel happens. Individual stories and POVs take the grim turns. Alvarez explores a theme of willful ignorance, for example, that is unsettling, namely because the character was an intimate of Trujillo. This book stretched my comfort zone when it comes to empathy in interesting, difficult ways.

You’ll Get This Closing Line Once You Read the Book

¡Colorín, Colorado, this review se ha acabado!

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Thanks NetGalley and Algonquin Books of Chapel Hil for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.