altlovesbooks
As I listened to this book, I kept hopping between 5 stars for the writing and 3 stars for the story. I ultimately decided that good writing doesn't save a disjointed story, but I wish I could have rated this one higher for the writing alone.
Alma Cruz is a writer of untold stories -- that is, despite being a writer of some renown, she still has bits of stories unfinished and unpublished that she feels compelled to put to rest. Rather than shove them in a shoebox and hide them in a closet, she constructs a literal graveyard for her finished stories on some inherited land in the Dominican Republic. She hires Filomena as her groundskeeper to maintain the land in her absences, and tells her to stop and listen to each story once a day. So, while keeping the grounds clear and maintaining the sculpted headstones, she starts pausing at one grave a day, and to her astonishment, she starts hearing these characters' stories. Not the incomplete snippets Alma wrote, but entire family stories involving intrigue, romance, infidelity, and death.
There's so many POVs in this book. Alma. Filomena. The characters from Alma's books (primarily Bienvenida and Manuel). Side characters sometimes get a chapter. We hop back and forth between characters in the present and in the past, making things feel very fragmented. There's a lot going on backstory-wise amongst everyone, but you really have to be good at keeping stories straight to stay oriented in this book. Despite all this, the prose is fantastic, and honestly was what kept me going throughout the book.
Great prose but too many POVs and too much to keep track of for me to rate much higher.
As I listened to this book, I kept hopping between 5 stars for the writing and 3 stars for the story. I ultimately decided that good writing doesn't save a disjointed story, but I wish I could have rated this one higher for the writing alone.
Alma Cruz is a writer of untold stories -- that is, despite being a writer of some renown, she still has bits of stories unfinished and unpublished that she feels compelled to put to rest. Rather than shove them in a shoebox and hide them in a closet, she constructs a literal graveyard for her finished stories on some inherited land in the Dominican Republic. She hires Filomena as her groundskeeper to maintain the land in her absences, and tells her to stop and listen to each story once a day. So, while keeping the grounds clear and maintaining the sculpted headstones, she starts pausing at one grave a day, and to her astonishment, she starts hearing these characters' stories. Not the incomplete snippets Alma wrote, but entire family stories involving intrigue, romance, infidelity, and death.
There's so many POVs in this book. Alma. Filomena. The characters from Alma's books (primarily Bienvenida and Manuel). Side characters sometimes get a chapter. We hop back and forth between characters in the present and in the past, making things feel very fragmented. There's a lot going on backstory-wise amongst everyone, but you really have to be good at keeping stories straight to stay oriented in this book. Despite all this, the prose is fantastic, and honestly was what kept me going throughout the book.
Great prose but too many POVs and too much to keep track of for me to rate much higher.