The Cemetery of Untold Stories

 The Cemetery of Untold Stories

 By Julia Alvarez

Gotta be honest, this was a snoozer of a book. I, like everybody else, have read In the Time of the Butterflies. I think it was for 9th Grade English, and I have a distinct memory of reading it in my room on a beautiful spring day with my windows open and just feeling great. I also won the Middlebury Book Award in High School, and was given a copy of the book because Julia Alvarez teaches (taught?) there.

Which is part of why this book is so weird. The protagonist, Alma, is a teacher at a small Vermont liberal arts college and also an author. And she's Dominican. So...a little autobiographical? She ends up moving back to her home island, where she creates a cemetery on a plot of land inherited from her father. But it's not a normal cemetery -- it's a place to bury the novels that she wanted to write but abandoned. It's a way of finally letting them rest. But, it turns out, they don't want to rest; they speak. And so the reader, but not Alma, learns the true tale of her father and why he was so silent all of her years. We also learn about the life of Trujillo's wife, Bienvenida, which seemed like a strong echo of Butterflies.

In the end, the conceit seemed just that. There seemed no impetus or drive in this story. It felt like the author wanted to write something and this came out. Glad it is over.