Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by the New York Times, Washington Post, Today.com, Goodreads, Literary Hub, BookPage, BBC.com, and Zibby Mag!"Hardcover Fiction Bestseller List – #7" - Boston Globe
“Only an alchemist as wise and sure as Alvarez could swirl the elements of folklore and the flavor of magical realism around her modern prose and make it all sing... lively, joyous, full of modern details and old tall tales… often witty, occasionally somber and elegiac.”—Luis Alberto Urrea, The New York Times Book Review
"Warm and graceful... a riveting story... In the richness of Alvarez’s book... “The Cemetery of Untold Stories” proves to be an imaginative celebration of living, oral traditions, and our capacity even outside the gates of publishing, to bring our stories of the past into the future."—Anita Felicelli, Los Angeles Times Book Review
“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 literary pioneer known for breaking ground in terms of centering the experiences of Latinx women and writing bilingually, Alvarez does so again here... entertaining... At the end, one message remains: Alvarez has seen it all as an author, but her love for telling stories remains as big as ever. Heartwarming.”—Gabino Igelsias, The Boston Globe
“In this imaginative new novel from critically acclaimed literary icon Julia Alvarez, untold stories are buried in a graveyard and laid to rest … until the characters decide to revolt.”—Today.com
“Mystical and moving, The Cemetery of Untold Stories shows why some stories must be told no matter how hard you try to bury them.”—TIME.com
“Mystifying, compelling, and often wryly funny… Julia Alvarez delivers a lyrical, thought-provoking meditation on truth, complicated family narratives, and the question of whose stories get told.”—Shelf Awareness
“A rich and moving saga of Dominican history emerges, embodied in the lives of irresistible characters… Her gifts for glowing prose and powerful narrative are still strong. Buried stories find their way to the light in this finely crafted novel.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Uplifting… Throughout, Alvarez seamlessly melds magical realism with heartfelt character portraits. This brims with the intoxicating power of storytelling.”—Publishers Weekly
"Alvarez brings the magic again in this nesting box of a novel. These tales… are linked in surprising ways, most especially in a humanity that transcends pathos and passion. May Alvarez continue to excavate stories for many years to come!"—Booklist (starred review)
“This new novel from the legendary author of In the Time of Butterflies is about a writer who decides to literally bury all her unfinished stories in a plot of inherited land. But the words still speak to her, even from beyond their grave.”—Book Riot
“Julia Alvarez's The Cemetery of Untold Stories is a really innovative and unique tale about a writer who literally tries to bury her draft manuscripts but fails to stop them coming to life.”—BBC.com
“Like How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, Alvarez’s pathbreaking novel from 1991, her new book explores sisterhood, immigration and return, and family secrets.”—Washington Post
"The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez glows with life. What emerges is a rich story of Dominican history, full of lush prose and quick wit, of love and loss, that Alvarez skillfully weaves back to Alma’s story in the present. Stories, it seems, find a way to get themselves told. Let’s hope Alvarez has more to tell."—Colette Bancroft, Tampa Bay Times
“A powerful and lyrical allegory about an older artist haunted by her own creativity. Alvarez has a wonderful way of being both lyrical and precisely concrete at the same time. Magical and multifaceted, this meditation on creativity, culture and aging is a triumph.”—Carole V. Bell, BookPage (Starred Review)
“A spellbinding, unforgettable ride for readers... This multi-layered, rich novel about storytelling and the stories we tell ourselves to cope with life’s many struggles is a feat the acclaimed Alvarez has rightfully mastered.”—DominicanWriters.com
“Julia Alvarez enchants with a supernatural story… [Her] seventh novel, The Cemetery of Untold Stories, beautifully illuminates the experience of an artist’s twilight years…simply genius. Her writing is infused with lyricism and metaphor, but it’s also engrossing and accessible.” —BookPage
“Julia Alvarez’s novels have stunned us for years and her newest is no exception.”—B&N Reads
“Dominican-American novelist Julia Alvarez has occasionally flirted with magical realism throughout her career—but in The Cemetery of Untold Stories she takes it to Gabriel García Márquez levels, and the result is sublime... Always a master of atmosphere, Alvarez has created a mysterious yet fully realized setting for a story that examines how we create our stories—and how they inevitably intertwine.”—Apple
“Julia Alvarez has been one of the most successful and acclaimed Latina writers since the 1990s… In a brilliant fusion of the personal and the political, Alvarez’s characters are haunted by both their own memories and the lingering memory of Trujillo’s regime.”—Bustle
“Julia Alvarez's thought-provoking and powerful The Cemetery of Untold Stories is a balancing act of the everyday and the magical, a blend of history and cuento. Through imperfect characters longing for love and fighting against el olvido, we are reminded that each of us is capable of terrible cruelty or incredible compassion, and that stories have the power to bring us together.” —Jaquira Díaz, author of Ordinary Girls
“The Cemetery of Untold Stories asks us to consider if our tales will last forever or if they might one day be forever lost. Yet there is nothing to fear or lament in this reality—not when we are soothed by the balm of Alvarez’s tender wit and her large-hearted candor. What a blessing to have one of our finest writers assure us that indeed ‘we are in this story together.” —Manuel Muñoz, author of The Consequences
“Julia Alvarez delivers yet another glorious novel, this time about a very unique kind of love—the love of storytelling. Scheherazade-like, Alvarez keeps us hooked with surprising plot twists and revelations, and characters so captivating that we want to get lost in the corridors of their tales. Simply stated, this book is magical.” —Rigoberto González, director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing, Rutgers University, and author of To the Boy Who Was Night: Poems Selected and New
“What a love letter not only to storytelling, but also to the tender, urgent, funny, heartbreaking reasons we tell stories in the first place. This cemetery is a fertile field of rebirth, reawakening, and joy. Every page overflows with delight and wisdom.” —Stacey D’Erasmo, author of The Complicities
“A magical new novel focused on storytelling itself.”—Literary Hub
“The Cemetery of Untold Stories is magical realism at its finest, and just plain magical.”—Amazon
“Julia Alvarez made history in 1991 with her novel How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent. Thirty three years later and she’s still delivering the goods, in this case a beguilingstory set in the Dominican Republic. It’s a cross of Lincoln In The Bardo and the very real history of the DR, perfect for fans of Alvarez’s magic.”—Parade.com
“A writer in the Dominican Republic buries her work — in the dirt, not in drawers — in this fantastical novel by the beloved author of In the Time of the Butterflies.”—Washington Post, 2024 Books Preview
★ 2024-02-17
When a novelist decides to retire, she builds a cemetery for the stories she has never finished telling.
Alma Cruz has had a successful career as a novelist and professor. Upon retiring from academia, she vows she’s done with writing as well. She wants most of all to return from the U.S. to her family’s homeland, the Dominican Republic, and live quietly. But what to do with those boxes full of notes and manuscripts for the books she didn’t get around to writing? Alma buys a plot of land in a working-class neighborhood in the Dominican Republic. Before she builds a casita to live in, she builds a cemetery for the stories. She burns the boxes—except for two that won’t catch fire—and inters them all. One of the intact boxes holds notes for a book about Alma’s enigmatic father, Dr. Manuel Cruz; the other is research for a book about Bienvenida Inocencia Ricardo, the forgotten first wife of the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, a real-life monster who has haunted much of Alvarez’s fiction. Alma hires a woman who lives nearby to guard and maintain the cemetery until she can move in. But Filomena will become indispensable, not just for her kindness and loyalty but because she can hear the stories Alma has buried. Filomena is illiterate, but when she sits in meditation at the books’ graves, their subjects begin to speak to her. The novel’s focus shifts away from Alma to the stories of her father and Bienvenida, and of Filomena herself. As those separate plots touch and interweave, a rich and moving saga of Dominican history emerges, embodied in the lives of irresistible characters. Alvarez returns to many of her familiar subjects: family and especially the relationships among sisters, immigrants’ experiences, the empowerment of women. Her gifts for glowing prose and powerful narrative are still strong.
Buried stories find their way to the light in this finely crafted novel.
