When celebrated writer Alma Cruz inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, she turns it into a place to bury her untold stories—literally. She creates a graveyard for manuscript drafts and revisions and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her. Alma wants her characters to rest in peace, but they have other ideas, and the cemetery becomes a mysterious sanctuary for their true narratives.
A book about the power of narratives and the way they shape us. Engaging and written in a playful, crystal-clear prose, this novel explores friendship, love, sisterhood, living between cultures, and how people can be haunted by the things they don’t finish ... A playful novel ... Besides being entertaining and tackling some important subjects like misogyny, migration, infidelity, and injustice with humor and grace, The Cemetery of Untold Stories accomplishes one more thing that deserves attention: a deep self-awareness that permeates every page.
The famous author has always wrestled shadow and sunlight, laughter and agony, into tales that sometimes felt like ghost stories. Readers knew to seek the truths behind the narrative — to find sorrow in the funniest scenes, or the unexpected outburst of joy in a somber one ... Often witty, occasionally somber and elegiac.
It's a story that's both languorous and urgent in conjuring a world from magical happenings ... There is always something magical to discover in a story, and that is especially true in Alvarez's landing place.
