 | A WRITER'S WIT |  R. Adams |
MY BOOK WORLD
Alvarez, Julia. Afterlife: A Novel. Chapel Hill: Algonquin, 2020.
A woman in her sixties loses her husband, and she turns to her three sisters, on whom she has depended since her childhood. Afterlife is more than a novel title here; it is a motif formed over and over again. The woman must now figure out how to live her afterlife: life without her husband, life with weird, bothersome neighbors, life with insistent and sometimes needy sisters. Yet because of these numerous eruptions of life going on around her, she must adjust. She must help others in the midst of her own grief. In the end, after aiding one sister as well as a stranger in need (an undocumented pregnant teenager), she is able to settle down to her singular life, and she has earned it. But one gets the feeling that if the story were to continue, the woman would still be interrupted by others in need and she would indeed help them. That’s who she is. That is her life, her afterlife.
Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Madeleine Albright
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Eoin Colfer
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Lauren Myracle
FRI: My Book World | Carol Burnett, Carrie and Me: A Mother-Daughter Love Story
A woman in her sixties loses her husband, and she turns to her three sisters, on whom she has depended since her childhood. Afterlife is more than a novel title here; it is a motif formed over and over again. The woman must now figure out how to live her afterlife: life without her husband, life with weird, bothersome neighbors, life with insistent and sometimes needy sisters. Yet because of these numerous eruptions of life going on around her, she must adjust. She must help others in the midst of her own grief. In the end, after aiding one sister as well as a stranger in need (an undocumented pregnant teenager), she is able to settle down to her singular life, and she has earned it. But one gets the feeling that if the story were to continue, the woman would still be interrupted by others in need and she would indeed help them. That’s who she is. That is her life, her afterlife.
Up Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Madeleine Albright
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Eoin Colfer
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Lauren Myracle
FRI: My Book World | Carol Burnett, Carrie and Me: A Mother-Daughter Love Story
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