Afterlife by Julia Alvarez

"You, who quite truly knew him, can quite truly continue in his spirit and on his path. Make it the task of your mourning to explore what he had expected of you, had hoped for you, had wished to happen to you...his influence has not vanished from your existence..."~from The Dark Interval by Rainer Maria Rilke

Reading about the death of a loved one during the time of Coronavirus is difficult. I feel the cold blade of fear which I daily push back down into my subconscious, then "tie my hat and crease my shawl" to perform my tasks and obligations.

Afterlife is the story of Hispanic retired literature teacher Antonia who mourns the loss of her husband Sam. She struggles to understand how to now live. Her sisters are calling her to join them in confronting their sibling's bipolar illness. An illegal immigrant employed by her Vermont farmer neighbor implores her to help him bring his girl to join him.

All these demands! Antonia just wants to tend her own garden and live with her sorrow. But knowing Sam has changed her. His compassion remains an example of how to live in this world. Sam"seems to be resurrecting inside her," and she wonders, "is this all his afterlife will amount to? Saminspired deeds from the people who love him?"

Antonia's mind is filled with the books she loved and taught, including Rainer Maria Rilke. Last year I had read The Dark Interval which shares Rilke's letters of condolences. Alvarez's novel embodies Rilke's philosophy.

Against her nature and inclination, Sam leads Antonia to risk becoming involved in the lives and problems of other people. "Living your life is a full-time job," a sister justifies. Isn't that the truth? Then, a therapist reads Rilke to the sisters: "Death does not wound us without, at the same time, lifting us toward a more perfect understanding of this being and of ourselves."

Antonia's students always responded to Rilke's poem 'Archaic Torso of Apollo" which ends, "you must change your life." It is a line that has haunted ever me since I first read it. The question, Antonia wonders, is how and when do we change it?

It is a question to be asked over and over. There is no end to such a consideration. We read a book and what we learn reminds us that we must change our life. We see a work of art, Rilke his Greek torso, Antonia Landscape with The Fall of Icarus, or when hear a symphony, or observe a beautiful spring flower or a deep woods filled with birdsong--

All the world is life-changing if we allow ourselves to truly live and open our senses and hearts and minds. To be alive is life-changing. To die is life-changing.

Antonia accepts the challenge to be Saminspired.

Alvarez is a brilliant writer who has combined a deep reflection on existence with timely questions. There is no better time for this message.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

The publisher blurb offered,

Afterlife is a compact, nimble, and sharply droll novel. Set in this political moment of tribalism and distrust, it asks: What do we owe those in crisis in our families, including—maybe especially—members of our human family? How do we live in a broken world without losing faith in one another or ourselves? And how do we stay true to those glorious souls we have lost?

Read an excerpt from Afterlife
https://d17lzgq6gc2tox.cloudfront.net/downloadable/asset/original/9781643750255_be.pdf?1584638362

Read Alvarez's essay Living the Afterlife
https://d17lzgq6gc2tox.cloudfront.net/downloadable/asset/original/9781643750255_ae.pdf?1584637610

Afterlife
by Julia Alvarez
Algonquin Books
Pub Date April 7,  2020
ISBN: 9781643750255
hardcover $25.95 (USD)

The Dependents: Wisdom in Grief

Something was keeping me from writing a review of The Dependents by Katharine Dion. I loved the book. I found it thoughtful and moving and surprising, and somber and soulful. Why was I wordless?

It came to me that I identified too much with Gene, the protagonist, a recent widower who can't move beyond the loss of his wife of 49 years.

I have been married for 46 years. I was a month from my 20th birthday when I married. And for all our ups and downs, good times and bad times, my husband has been my best friend. I could feel Gene's loss and knew it might someday be mine, or my husband's.

"In some mad inversion of time, grieving his wife's death resembled falling in love."-The Dependents

After Maida's sudden death, Gene learns that his wife was in many ways a stranger to him. Who truly knows and understands another? We are like locked chests, filled with treasures and terrors we can not share. Gene depended on Maida, saw only her best, assumed she was happy. But now he wonders, did she love him? Was Gene her 'one and only' or merely a comfortable compromise?

In college, the shy Gene latched onto the more worldly Ed. Ed pairs with Gayle, who Gene also liked, and introduced Gene to Maida. It took Gene a long time to make a move to make Maida his girlfriend; he fell in love with her first. He was elated when she agreed to marry him. He was lucky, he thought. The two couple's friendship has remained central to all their lives; they vacation together at the lake every year, raising their kids together.

Maida's dad set Gene up in his own shoe store business. Gene thought there was something honorable in fine footwear. But shopper's values changed, and the store closed. Maida had her work at the college child care center. Gene went to his old office out of habit.

Maida and Gene had a daughter, Dary, who has a daughter Annie. Dary is no comfort to her grieving father; she insists on an understanding of her mother that evades Gene's ideal. Dary insists Maida had other lovers before him and needs outside of her work as a childcare provider, wife, and mother. That she had given up some better version of herself to be Gene's wife.

As Gene begins to see who his wife truly was, he doubts everything he took for granted, struggling to understand how love was not enough, how he had failed the women he loved.

Gene must come to terms with the meaning of his life when so much had eluded him. When our life is nearing completion, should we second-guess our choices, regret the life we lived? Or realize it's what we wanted, after all.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

THE DEPENDENTS

by Katharine Dion

Little, Brown & Company

On Sale: June 19th 2018

Price: $13.99

ISBN-13: 9780316473880