Saving the World, Julia Alvarez

2.5 stars

First Sentence: In the fall of her fiftieth year, Alma finds herself lost in a dark mood she can’t seem to shake.

Thoughts: This is not a novel. It’s two novellas slammed together under one cover. One is better than the other, but unfortunately if I ripped out the chapters I didn’t like to get the book I want, it would mess up the binding. Such is life.

The first novella is about Alma Huebner, a Dominican writer living in New England. She has a bad case of writer’s block. She shot to fame with her first semiautobiographical novel which quickly became part of the Modern Canon. Her publisher wants her to write the next installment in the family saga. No matter how hard Alma tries, the saga just isn’t coming. But she has found something she does write about.

Back in 1803 a Spanish doctor, Francisco Balmis, set out on an expedition to bring the smallpox vaccine to the western hemisphere. This being 1803, the only way to transport the vaccine reliably was in a person. What he did was to vaccinate a boy, wait for the vesicle to rise, and “harvest” the fluid from the vesicle to vaccinate the next boy. The boys he chose were all orphans who were all guaranteed to have never had smallpox by their guardian. That guardian is what really interests Alma. Her name was Isabel Sendales y Gomez. Who was she, really, Alma wonders. Why was she on the expedition? What was it like for her? That’s what she ends up writing about and it’s a captivating story about a woman who becomes a reluctant explorer and finds her destiny in places she never expected.

Unfortunately that story is caged in by Alma’s tale which starts out ridiculous and only gets worse. First she gets a call from a woman claiming she gave Richard, Alma’s husband, AIDS. Turns out the woman was a few pallets short of a full load and was calling people all over town with the same (false) story. Then a strange man shows up in Alma’s yard. But then she finds out that he’s her neighbor’s formerly-estranged son who came home when he heard his mother had terminal cancer. And guess what? The crazy lady is his wife! This all culminates in a Thanksgiving Day scene that is too silly for words.

Before she can deal with the fallout from the Silly Thanksgiving Scene, Alma has to rush down to the Dominican Republic to help her husband. Richard works for a do-gooding corporation called Help International that goes around the world doing good. The current project was to set up a some kind of “green” something in a remote DR village, but that’s not all they’re up to. The green project was affiliated with a clinic where a pharmaceutical company was testing a new AIDS vaccine. Richard blithely assumes the locals are fine with what’s going on, but he’s brought back to reality when a group of young men storm the facility and hold everyone there hostage. That’s why Alma went back to her home country.

When she gets there she boards the first train to Crazytown. She jumps over the barricade and barges into the facility pretending to be a journalist sent to get the real story of the standoff. Does it go badly? Yes! Is it a ham-handed condemnation of American business invading Caribbean nations? Of course! Do we learn anything by the end? Are you kidding? Do we feel a deep pang of regret every time one of the Isabel chapters end and we find ourselves back in Alma’s fever-dream of a life? Most definitely! Is this up to Alvarez’s usual standard of excellence? Absolutely not!

Afterlife, Julia Alvarez

6 stars

First Sentence: She is to meet him /

Thoughts: Recently Apple County Library reopened its doors to the public and I saw the inside of the building for the first time since March. I immediately made my way to the new releases shelf to see if there was anything interesting. And there was! A new Julia Alvarez book! GLEE & JUBILATION! :D:D:D:D:D:D:D

Why yes, I do enjoy her work. Why do you ask?

Afterlife is about coming to terms with loss and dealing with grief. Not a subject that would usually inspire Glee & Jubilation but a) it is beautifully written (as one would expect from an Alvarez book) and b) I’m about in the same place now that Antonia was at the beginning of the book in terms of grief. Brief personal aside: last year my former neighbor and still friend from Pirateville, The Dom, died in February. Then in April, The Eclectic Dad passed away. The latter was expected. The former was not. Needless to say, I had a sad. But now I’m able to deal. Which is where Antonia is getting after the death of her husband.

They tell you not to make big decisions for a year after a major loss like that.+ Good thing that Antonia’s sister Izzy waited a year before causing a major crisis for her three sisters. Antonia, Momo, and Izzy are all on their way to middle sister Tilly’s house in Illinois to celebrate Antonia’s birthday when Izzy disappears. The sisters go into full freakout mode. Izzy was notorious for spur-of-the-moment crazy decisions—so notorious that baby sister Momo, who is a therapist, armchair diagnosed her with bipolar disorder. Once they stop waving their arms in the air and yelling, they file a missing person report with the police and hire a PI to hunt down Izzy. Antonia wants to give her full attention to her sisters but she’s got other problems at home in Vermont.

Back home Antonia somehow got involved with helping Mario, an undocumented Mexican immigrant working at the farm next door, bring his girlfriend Estela across the country. She’s already (illegally) across the border, but they coyotes are demanding more money for bus fare and…ahem…“expenses.” Antonia ponies up the cash and heads off to visit her sisters. When she comes home from that crisis there’s another one waiting in her garage: Estela, who is unexpectedly very, very, just-about-to-give-birth pregnant. And the baby isn’t Mario’s. And Mario’s pissed and kicked Estela out of the trailer. And Estela is due to give birth any minute now, but Antonia is called down to Boston to deal with the next development in the Izzy drama.

And then, just to cap off this cavalcade of fun, the local sheriff lets Antonia know that ICE is planning a raid.

You would think that all of this would pull Antonia out of the grief-cocoon she’s woven around herself since her husband’s death. Yeah, no. She resents all of these crises, she doesn’t want to think about other people, don’t they realize that she is still suffering? But when the next catastrophe hits, she realizes that she’s better equipped to handle it. Then she’s even better at the next one. Eventually Antonia gets to the point where she can make plans for her future, she can envision her life as a widow, and she begins to accept the empty spots where her lost loved once were without constantly trying to fill them up with literary quotes.

This is all written in some of the most beautiful prose published in this trainwreck of a year. A small sample:

She is keeping to her routines, walking a narrow path through the loss—not allowing her thoughts to stray. Occasionally, she takes sips of sorrow, afraid the big wave might wash her away. Widows leaping into a husband’s pyre, mothers jumping into a child’s grave. She has taught those stories.

Today, like every other day, you wake up empty and frightened, she quotes to herself as she looks at her reflection in the mirror in the morning. Her beloved Rumi no longer able to plug the holes.

Late afternoons as the day wanes, in bed in the middle of the night, in spite of her efforts, she finds herself at the outer edge where, in the old maps, the world drops off, and beyond is terra incognita, sea serpents, the Leviathan—Here There Be Dragons.

*swoon* So lovely. So true.

+This is good advice. I had some major changes I was considering last year, but I chose to sit tight and then Covid happened right before my year was up. Turns out sitting tight was the best decision to make. Sometimes They have good advice and you should listen to They.